


I Can Tell You How It Ends

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1950s, Angst, DBBB 2015, Dean/Benny Big Bang 2015, M/M, Mark of Cain, Original Character Death(s), Period-Typical Racism, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:07:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4145808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sent back in time to 1959 to retrieve a magical key, Dean runs into a pre-Andrea Benny, and narrowly avoids killing him. Now he’s stuck playing nurse to an injured vampire and trying to unfuck a timeline he shouldn’t even be in yet. How much more complicated could things get?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was started in January, and takes place after (what is now) a slightly alternate ending to S10, in which Dean still has the Mark but is, theoretically, able to control it thanks to a spell. It was written for the [Dean/Benny Big Bang](http://deanbennychallenges.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. Thanks so much to the mods for their hard work on the challenge. 
> 
> The wonderful illustrations are by [hisroyalhellishness](http://hisroyalhellishness.tumblr.com), who was a delight to work with, and deserves all the love. Full-size versions of them can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4154583/)!
> 
> And of course, thanks to my wonderful betas, [frozen_delight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frozen_delight) and [viviansface](http://viviansface.livejournal.com/), for all their help and encouragement. You're both rockstars. <33
> 
> Apologies to Mr. Lafitte for any and all nautical inaccuracies.

It’s quiet, and Dean doesn’t like it.

Not _quiet_ -quiet, because the bunker’s full of creaky old pipes and Stone Age machinery and the occasional thing that goes bump in a box somewhere down in the storerooms, so it doesn’t really do quiet. Still, it’s quieter than the crappy motels where they used to crash before they moved in—no interstate outside the door; no couples fighting or fucking on the other side of paper-thin walls—and Dean’s gotten accustomed enough to its noises that he doesn’t really notice them anymore.

It isn’t his alarm blasting AC/DC that wakes him up, and it isn’t his phone ringing with news of whatever thing’s gone down the crapper in the world overnight. It isn’t even Sam knocking on his door, laptop in hand, saying, _Hey, this looks like our kind of thing_. Dean comes awake slow, actually feeling like he’s gotten a decent night’s sleep for once, and it’s pretty awesome for the thirty seconds before his brain clicks into gear and he remembers that it’s quiet, and he doesn’t trust quiet.

He grabs the dead-guy robe Sam never stops complaining about, wraps it around himself and gropes on the shelf above the bed for a weapon. Finds the handle of Ruby’s knife and palms it. Just in case. Because it’s quiet.

Dean finds himself in stealth mode without any conscious decision on his part. Creeping down the corridors barefoot on the cold tiles, pressed in close to the walls. Listening.

Nothing.

The door to Sam’s bedroom stands ajar. Dean pushes it all the way open—slowly, so it doesn’t hit the wall and announce his presence with a bang—but the room’s empty, no sign of Sam except his running shoes discarded by the door and the precarious stack of books on the nightstand.

Dean makes for the library. Keeps his ears open for the clicking of keys that means Sam’s on his laptop and all’s right with the world—or, nothing more than usual is wrong with the world, anyhow—but he can’t hear it. He tightens his grip on the knife handle as he enters the room.

Sam’s sitting at the table. Only he’s hunched forward and he isn’t moving, and Dean’s heart leaps into his throat and he covers the last few meters between them at a run and—

And Sam sits up and turns to look at him, setting down the magnifying glass he’s been using to pore over some dusty old book with.

A fucking magnifying glass. Dean stares, and Sam stares right back, his eyes going to the knife in Dean’s hand.

“Dude,” he says, “what’s going on with you? You’ve been antsy since we got back.”

Back from where, he doesn’t say. But then, he doesn’t need to. His gaze slides away from the knife and up Dean’s arm, giving all the answer Dean needs. Answering his own question, too.

Dean tugs at the sleeve of the dead-guy robe, feeling like he’s under a microscope even though the Mark is covered up by his clothing, even though it isn’t supposed to have any power over him anymore. It’s a pale thing, now—the raised silvery-white of old scar tissue instead of the angry red brand—and bound to Dean’s will by the spell Sam pieced together from Rowena’s notes after they had to take her down. Dormant.

Sam’s been eyeing him anxiously ever since, possibly waiting for the outburst that Dean didn’t have time for when the shit hit the fan and he found out about Sam’s secret team-up. Honestly, Dean isn’t sure himself that he won’t lose it at some future point, when the whole thing has finally sunk in. Right now, though, he doesn’t think he has it in him to get mad. None of it feels a hundred percent real, however much he’d love to trust that it is. That it’s over, that he has everything under control and he won’t hear the Mark whispering inside his skull or feel it curling fiery tendrils through his veins ever again.

But they don’t get _over_. They get temporary reprieves before their world slides even deeper into the shit, and that’s it. So sue him if he isn’t all about the R &R right now.

Sam’s still looking at him. He shrugs.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m keeping my head in the game. You wanna get rusty, that’s your call, but don’t complain next time I gotta save your ass ‘cause some freak got the jump on you.”

Sam sighs and shakes his head, but Dean’s saved from having to shut down another attempted conversation about his mental state by Sam’s cellphone vibrating on the tabletop. Sam doesn’t move to pick it up right away, just looks at Dean for another couple seconds before Dean raises his eyebrows and says, “You gonna get that or what?”

“Huh.” Sam’s expression perks up when he looks at the screen. “Hey, Cas. Hang on, I’m gonna put you on speaker.”

Dean pulls up a chair beside him. Metatron’s back on lockdown upstairs, but apparently some smartass angel has figured out he had a bunch of notes—as in God’s notes—stashed away in various locations on Earth, because just once in a while the smug little fuck is as clever as he thinks he is. Cas has been trawling around looking for them, checking in with them every couple days, or whenever he finds something that might be interesting.

Sam still holds out hope he’ll find the magic instructions for permanently removing the Mark scrawled on the back of a cereal packet or something. Dean knows that. He’s as sure as he’s ever been that it’s a lost cause and Sam’s optimism is gonna drive them both nuts eventually, but he still can’t help the lurch his heart does whenever Cas calls to say he’s stumbled over something new, and he kind of hates himself for it.

He reaches over, snags Sam’s coffee cup and takes a slurp from it, ignoring the pissy look Sam gives him in return.

“Hey, man,” he says in the direction of Sam’s cell. “You got something?”

“Hello, Dean.” Cas’s voice is slow and careful, like he isn’t a hundred percent on what he’s about to say. “Yes, I believe I’ve… got something.”

Sam jumps in, all eagerness. “What is it? Is it about—”

“It isn’t about the Mark,” Cas says, and Sam almost manages to disguise his disappointed expression.

Dean ignores it, tries to ignore the heaviness in his gut that comes from the exact same place. “So,” he says. “What’s so important?”

“I think,” Cas says, “that I’ve found another way to close the gates of Hell.”

 

 

\----

 

“Let me get this straight,” Dean says. “Last time anybody heard anything about this key, it was in 1959.”

“Yes.” Cas rubs tiredly at his eyes.

“And it was on a boat. In Rhode Island.”

“Yes.”

“And nobody up there—” Dean points at the ceiling, “has a goddamn clue what it actually looks like.”

Cas sighs. “I’ve tried every available method of persuasion on Metatron. I honestly don’t think he knows.”

Dean shrugs. “Hey, who doesn’t love a challenge?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “This isn’t just gonna be like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack when for all we know, it’s disguised as a piece of hay.”

“Dude, hunters. Finding the supernatural when it’s hiding in plain sight? Kind of our job.”

“Yeah.” Sam sighs. “But most of the time we actually know what we’re looking for. Or at least we know how to figure out what we’re looking for. All we know about this key is it’s a ball of… mystical energy given physical form. It could look like—well, anything.”

“Mystical energy in physical form?” Dean grins, jerks his head in Cas’s direction. “Well, every time we’ve run into something like that before, it’s looked like a nerd.”

Cas doesn’t rise to the bait. He frowns, head on one side, then turns to Sam. “The Men of Letters kept many mystical artefacts in this bunker, correct?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they had any treasure maps from God.”

“I don’t believe he ever engaged in cartography.”

Dean rolls his eyes, and Sam gives a shake of his head. “Never mind,” Sam says. “But—you think there might be something here that could help?”

“It’s possible. There are objects that… react to the presence of certain energies, under the right circumstances.”

Understanding dawns on Sam’s face. “Like Dean’s amulet,” he says, and Dean feels the absence of its weight at his neck in a way he hasn’t in years. Feels a spike of guilt, too, because all he has now is a paper imitation hanging off of Baby’s rear view mirror, and that’s not gonna be much use to them here.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “Kinda tossed that in the trash, so. Sorry.” He shrugs again. _Sorry_ could never really cover it.

He doesn’t know what he expects from Sam—sad-eyed understanding or stony poker-face, he guesses. But instead, Sam bites his lip, and actually looks—well, kind of guilty. “About that,” he says.

Dean blinks, takes a second to grasp what Sam’s saying. “You fished it out?” Sam gives a sheepish nod, and Dean doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “Huh.”

Something eases inside his chest, though. It’s like feeling the accustomed ache of an old injury suddenly fade; like breathing clean air again after hours trapped in some dank underground monster lair.

“Shouldn’t take me long to dig it out,” Sam says. But then his shoulders slump. “Not that that helps us much. We don’t even know where to start looking for this thing.” He actually seems to shrink a little, like his disappointment is a physical weight.

Dean gets it. A second chance at saving the world—like Dean talked him out of doing. Getting it right this time. But nope—it’s still just as far away as ever. Another regret.

Unless.

“Well,” he says. “Actually, we do.”

Sam and Cas both turn to look at him.

“Know where to start looking,” he explains. “1959.”

“Dean,” Sam begins, eyes wide and unhappy. Dean ignores him.

“Cas can zap me back there, right? We know where the thing was, what boat it was put on—I figure that’s our closest shot.”

Sam narrows his eyes. He doesn’t argue the point, though, and Dean feels a flicker of hope. It’s the best chance they have, and he knows Sam has to see that too.

What Sam does say is, “What do you mean, zap _you_ back there?”

“C’mon, Sammy. You’re the brains of this outfit, Cas is our direct line upstairs. I’m—”

 _Disposable_ , his brain supplies, and he has to force himself not to say it.

“I’m no use sitting around here on my ass,” he says instead. “You guys find out what we do with the thing, I’ll find the thing. Division of labor or whatever.”

Sam still looks unimpressed, but Dean can see the cogs turning; see him getting ready to be persuaded. A chance at finishing what he couldn’t two years ago? At actually making the world a better place, not just pushing back uselessly against the tide of crap like they usually do? Sam isn’t gonna be able to pass that up.

“Ain’t like this is even a hunt,” he presses. “Just… find and retrieve, right?” He glances at Cas for confirmation.

Cas nods. “Metatron’s notes didn’t mention that anybody else was aware of the key’s whereabouts,” he says. “Its disappearance suggests it must have been warded, but we don’t know by whom, or why. There’s no reason to think anybody was looking for it.” He frowns. “Or even that whoever had it knew what it was for.”

“See?” Dean turns back to Sam. “All I gotta do is find this thing before it gets on the boat and swipe it. Piece of cake.”

The slump of Sam’s shoulders gives the lie to his dubious expression. Dean knows he’s won.

“Awesome,” he says. “So, Cas, how long do I got?”

Cas frowns, doing the math. “I won’t be sending you back as far as I did when you hunted the phoenix. Your being alone makes it easier. You’ll have a few days, maybe even a week.”

Dean nods. Sam’s staring at him. “You wanna go now?”

He shrugs. “Hey, I’m gonna pack first.” He pauses. “You think the Men of Letters stashed any old money around here? Make the trip a whole lot easier if they did.”

“Dean.”

“No time like the present, Sammy.”

“Fine.” Sam still looks pissed, but Dean just grins back at him. It’s relief, mostly. At having something to do other than wait around for the other shoe to drop. At the prospect of getting away from all the quiet.

 

 

\----

 

“So.”

Dean looks up from sorting weapons into his duffel. Just a couple, just in case. Knife; syringe; handgun; flask of holy water. The kind of stuff that’s easy to hide. Dean can’t afford to be conspicuous.

He’s already raided the weird closet they found in the west corridor when they first moved in. Disguises, he figures, or some kind of communal spares wardrobe for going out on field missions. (Honestly, he’s trying not to think too hard about the ‘communal’ part.) Anyway, he has a scratchy wool suit with suspenders and a goddamn handkerchief that goes in the pocket. At least the hat is kind of cool.

Sam casts a look over the pile of clothes and raises an eyebrow. Dean thinks about pointing out how there’s no way the Men of Letters had anything long enough in the leg for a giant freak like Sam, so that’s just one more reason for him to stay home, but he decides it isn’t worth the inevitable argument.

“Dude,” he says instead. “What?”

Sam doesn’t start in with the expected lecture, though. Instead, he hands over his laptop. The screen shows some store website that looks like it was designed in 1995 and nobody’s thought to revamp it since. Dean squints at the page. Opens his mouth to demand to know what he’s supposed to be looking at—and, oh, there it is. In among the bright green writing and the hideous clipart. A hunters’ symbol.

“Warren and Daughters,” Sam says. “Antiques and occult artefacts. Looks like his granddaughter runs the place now, but old man Warren opened up in…” He looks at the screen again. “’55. Still at the same address.” He shrugs. “Might be a good place to start.”

Dean looks at him in surprise, recognizing the peace offering for what it is. “Thanks, Sammy,” he says, and goes back to packing.

 

 

\----

 

A couple hours later, and Dean’s suited up and ready to go, the address of Warren’s store on a slip of paper in his pocket. Sam still doesn’t look a hundred percent on board with the whole thing, but he isn’t arguing, which Dean counts as a win.

“Ready?” he says.

Sam nods and reaches into his pocket, then holds out the amulet to Dean.

It’s warm from being in Sam’s pocket. Smooth and solid in Dean’s hands. He just looks at it for a second. Then he slips the cord over his head and meets Sam’s eyes.

“Thanks, Sammy,” he says. Sam’s smile is small, but real.

Cas takes a step toward Dean, then, solemn-faced. “You have until this time next week,” he says. Then he frowns. “Or—this week minus fifty-six years and three—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean nods impatiently. “I get it. Where are you gonna zap me back from?”

“You should go back to the place you land,” Sam puts in. “Cas should have a read on you there.”

“Sure.” Dean squares his shoulders, faces Cas. “Beam me up.”

Cas’s forehead wrinkles. “I think that quote is incorrect,” he says. Dean opens his mouth to tell him to can it, but then Cas’s hand touches his forehead and everything is white light and the sensation of falling.

 

 

\----

 

Dean comes around on his ass on the ground, palms scraping on wet concrete, nausea rising in his gut. He lurches to the side and retches, the leftover pizza he ate for breakfast and the industrial-strength coffee he’s been mainlining all morning feeling a hell of a lot less like a good idea on their way back up. His head swims.

Time travel: still sucks.

He holds still long enough for his nausea to subside, squeezing his eyes shut in the hope that the world will stop spinning if he can’t see it. Breathes in deeply for a couple minutes, then blinks and takes a look around.

Dean knows the basics. He’s in Providence, RI—somewhere near the docks, from what he can hear. The lapping of waves; machinery and voices. The sound of the waterfront gearing up for the day. Weak gray light in the sliver of sky he sees when he looks up, which tells him it’s way too early for any sane person to deal with the whole being awake thing. He’s in a narrow alley around back of some industrial building, the outline of a dumpster just about visible in the thin dawn light.

It smells fucking awful. A little like rotting fish, and a lot like trash and puke and—

Dean sniffs, pressing his sleeve over his mouth in case his guts decide to do any more acrobatics. Stiffens when he smells it again.

Blood.

He narrows his eyes and pushes himself to his feet—quietly, glancing up and down the alley, peering into the shadows.

Nothing moves, and it takes Dean a couple seconds to pick it out. The outline of a foot, sticking out from the other side of the dumpster, not moving.

He creeps toward the dumpster and peers around it. There’s a man slumped against the alley wall, a liquor bottle lying on its side inches from his trailing hand.

Maybe he’s just some drunk asshole who got bloodied up in a bar fight and passed out on the way home. That’d make Dean’s life so much fucking simpler.

Yeah, right.

Dean fumbles for the knife in his boot and pulls it out. Inches closer.

The guy doesn’t move. Dean reaches out, ready to lift the guy’s chin and feel for a pulse—but his eyes are getting used to the shadows, and they make out the dark patch at the guy’s neck before his fingers touch it. Throat ripped out, blood soaking the front of his shirt. His face is pale, drained.

Vamp kill. Should’ve known this wasn’t gonna be a milk run.

Dean stays there for a moment, crouched still in the stinking alley. Tests his reaction and is relieved to find only resignation there. No throb of excitement, no burn from the scar on his arm, no lust for the kill. He lets out a breath.

He grabs his duffel and pulls it open, fumbling among the clothes and the knives and the stack of greenbacks he found locked in an old tin cashbox in one of the bunker’s storerooms. After a couple seconds, his fingers close around the syringe. Grimacing, he slips it out of its narrow wooden box and reaches for the guy’s arm again, sticks in the needle and pulls the plunger out. If there are vamps around, at least he’ll have a way of slowing them down.

Then he reaches for the liquor bottle, holds it up to the light. Still a couple inches left in there. Wipes around the neck with his sleeve.

Well. He’s gonna need it.

 

 

\----

 

He figures he’ll start out by finding himself a home base. The harbor area looks pretty down on its luck, warehouses standing empty, run-down tenements lining the nearby streets. If there are vamps hanging around, this is where they’ll be hunting. Where nobody’s gonna care too much about their victims, maybe not even notice they’re gone.

So Dean hands over more of those dollars than he’s really happy about for a room with a rickety bedframe and damp, peeling wallpaper, and he breaks out the salt and the spraypaint until the place looks like home, and then he pockets Sam’s Google Maps printout and heads out in search of Warren’s Antiquities.

He finds it after only a couple wrong turns. The place may only have been open four years, but it already looks old, the way places that deal in magic always do. The front window is cobwebby—possibly hasn’t been cleaned since the place opened—and there’s a shelf of moldy old books behind the counter that looks like it came straight from Bobby’s place. The window’s a mess of plain junk and actual weird shit, old-lady vases and carriage clocks piled up next to intricate ceremonial-looking jewelry and creepy idols carved out of marble. The whole lot is covered in a thick patina of dust.

Unfortunately, that glimpse through the window is all Dean can see, because there’s a card reading _Closed_ propped up in there, as yellowed and mildewed-looking as everything else in the store, and he can’t see any sign of life through the grimy glass.

Dean sighs. He reaches for the amulet at his neck—made unfamiliar by years of absence, and he isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to it again—but it’s cold to the touch. He eyes the door, thinks briefly about doing a little B&E.

No indication that the key is actually in there, though, and maybe it’s a bad idea to burn his bridges with this Warren guy before he’s even met him. He’ll come back later.

And hey, in the meantime? He has a job to do.

 

 

\----

 

It’s late morning by the time Dean makes it back down to the docks, and the knot of people gathered around the mouth of the alley where he landed tells him that somebody’s stumbled across his dead guy. He shoulders his way through the crowd, until he’s close enough to eavesdrop on the couple of cops standing around to fend off gawkers.

“So, what d’you think?” says one of them. “The Office?”

“Nah.” The other cop takes a drag from his cigarette, spits in the dirt. “Italians ain’t this messy. Gotta be the new guys. The smugglers working outta O’Connell.”

“Smugglers? On Patriarca’s territory?” The first cop cocks an eyebrow. “You think it’s even humanly possible to be that dumb?”

Cop #2 shrugs. “Boss seems to think so. ‘Course, there’s the little problem that nobody’s seen anything go in or out of the warehouse yet, but as soon as he gets a warrant…” He trails off, making an expansive gesture with his cigarette, and they both laugh.

Dean ducks his way back out through the crowd. He’s heard enough.

 

 

\----

 

Thing is, the warehouse is big. As in, really big. From the outside, it looks deserted: no sign of where the vamps are hiding out. Dean doesn’t even know where to start looking, and he’s beginning to think maybe this is more than a one-man job.

He should probably wait. He should probably head back to the occult store tomorrow, see if old man Warren—or young man Warren, as he likely is now—can put him in touch with some backup.

Only the thought of walking away without doing anything makes his fingers itch. He can at least check it out, right? Do a little recon.

He tries a side entrance. Finds it locked, but that isn’t too much of a problem.

The docks might have been busy, once. Now, though, half the industrial buildings stand empty, windows like dead eyes, and there’s that look on the faces of the men who work here. Hollow and run-down, but kind of desperate, too. Like they know all too well that their jobs suck, but they’re clinging on with both hands anyway, because they know they’re disposable and there’s a queue of poor assholes just as needy as they are waiting around the corner. The place is dying. Slowly, maybe, but it’s dying.

This building looks like one of the deserted ones, even though Dean knows it isn’t. He hasn’t seen anybody enter or leave—and the people on the docks seem to avoid it, too. Not a conscious thing; they just skirt away from it, don’t look into its windows. Like they know there’s something bad in there.

Suits Dean just fine. It means there’s nobody hanging around, as the sun sinks and the lights blink on across the harbor, to watch him pick the lock.

He slips in the side door. His boot comes into contact with something that rattles, and it makes him start and hold his breath until he’s sure that nobody’s coming. He frowns and looks down.

Just a pile of wood offcuts, stacked haphazardly against the corridor wall. Probably means this isn’t the vamps’ main way in or out. Good. Dean hesitates a second, then grabs one of the smaller pieces of wood—careful to keep quiet, this time—and wedges the door open. Just a couple inches, not wide enough to be noticeable from the outside. You never know when you’re gonna need an escape route.

Dean creeps further into the building, groping his way along damp walls, not daring to turn on his flashlight. He holds his breath, listens hard. Vampire hearing’s a problem. He’s just gonna have to hope the echoing bareness of the place will work to his advantage, carry the footsteps of any prowling bloodsuckers to his ears before they hear his heartbeat, his breathing.

It’s quiet as he inches closer to the center of the warehouse. There aren’t even any signs, like you might expect. Vamps gotta sleep, just like people, but there’s no sign of a nest. No bodies, either. No bloodstains.

He’s starting to wonder if he’s gotten the wrong place when he hears them. Voices. Quiet, but clear in the silence.

The place isn’t anywhere near full, but there are a couple stacks of packing crates, and Dean ducks behind one as he comes out on the cavernous main storage area. He gropes for the syringe in his pocket and grips it tight, forces himself to keep his breathing steady as he spots the group of vamps.

There are five of them, standing in a circle around a chair in the middle of the floor. It’s dark in here, and Dean can’t make out any faces, just shadowy outlines. The poor bastard tied to the chair looks like he’s unconscious, though, head lolling to one side.

As Dean watches, one of the vamps steps forward and grips the guy by the hair, dragging his head upward.

“C’mon, Howie,” the vamp says, smooth and threatening. “Ain’t no use playing dead. We know what you did.”

He’s talking like he knows the guy. Dean sees the glint of something metallic in his hand. He’s holding a machete.

So the poor sucker in the chair is—well, a sucker. Not some innocent civilian. That’s something, Dean guesses.

The vamp in the chair stirs and groans, doing a piss-poor impression of somebody just waking up. “What the hell, man?” he protests. “I didn’t do nothing.”

Machete Vamp gives a put-upon sigh. “You fed on shore. Brought the cops sniffing around here,” he says. “Local mob won’t be far behind. The old man won’t like it. He said to do things clean.”

The vamp in the chair sags, defeated. “Sorento, man.” His voice creeps up a notch, becomes a whine. “You know how it is. If he didn’t make us _wait_ —”

Sorento. Dean frowns to himself. He’s heard that name before; he’s sure of it. Which is weird in itself, because he sure as hell doesn’t make a habit of being on any-name terms with monsters.

“We got to get supplies. You know that. Find targets.”

“Fine,” says Chair Vamp. “Fine, it won’t happen again—”

Machete Vamp—Sorento—shakes his head. “Sorry, man,” he says. “Nothing personal.”

Chair Vamp opens his mouth like he’s about to scream, but before any sound comes out there’s the swish and glint of a blade in the darkness, and his head hits the floor with a dull thud. Nobody flinches.

Sorento turns away. “Put him in the harbor,” he says. “Make sure he sinks.”

A burly vamp lifts the body and hoists it over his shoulder. One of the others goes for the head, and a third gets the door as they troop outside. Must be making for a back room; somewhere they can package the body up so it doesn’t look like a body when they dump it in the harbor.

Dean backs toward the corridor he used to get in, turns and cuts out as quick as his legs can move without making a noise. Doesn’t look like this warehouse is where the vamps are living, but maybe these three will lead him to their hideaway after they’ve gotten rid of the body. If he can find out where their nest is, he’s halfway to taking them out.

He emerges onto the street and takes a lungful of salty air. Tucks himself in against the side of the building and peers around through the gloom for any sign of the vamps.

Minutes pass. The damp air seeps in around him, and he has to fight the urge to shuffle his feet and rub his hands together against the cold. The lapping of the water seems louder the longer he stands there in the quiet.

Then—there, near the water’s edge. Two guys loading a heavy packing crate onto a little dinghy. That has to be them.

Dean sticks in close to the wall of the building, staying in the shadows, creeping closer to the dock.

“Okay,” says one of the vamps. “Let’s go.”

The other nods and casts off.

Two vamps in a boat. But there were three of them. Dean’s sure there were three of them.

There’s a sound behind him.

He turns on the spot, ready to strike—but there’s nobody there. Just shadows.

Dean sighs. Turns back around.

A featureless shape looms in front of him. The big vamp from earlier.

“’Fraid I can’t let you do that,” the vamp tells him.

It’s slurred through a mouthful of teeth, so Dean can’t place it at first—the chord of familiarity it strikes somewhere deep in his brain. He ignores it and snaps straight into self-preservation mode, ducking the punch the vamp throws at him so that his fist gouges right into the side of the building.

The vamp’s a little under Dean’s height, but the power behind that punch could knock a guy’s head off. Vamps are quick, too. Dean’s gonna have to catch him off-guard. Do something unexpected.

He spins away from the vamp, makes a break for it, like he’s gonna run out onto the docks. The vamp follows.

Dean turns, stops dead, and the vamp barrels right into him, sending them both crashing to the floor. He feels the breath go out of his lungs, the scrape of concrete through his shirt. But his grip on the syringe is still steady, and the vamp got the worst of it, his skull cracking as he hit the ground face-first.

It takes the vamp a couple seconds longer to come around, and that’s enough for Dean to get the advantage. He jumps the vamp, manages to pin a swinging fist long enough to jab the syringe into the side of his neck and shove in the plunger.

The vamp goes limp all at once, the fight draining out of him.

“Huh,” he says, his voice clearer now that his fangs have retracted. It’s just a breath, almost a laugh. No anger in it, which is possibly the weirdest thing Dean’s heard all day. “Guess you got me, brother.”

It’s a low, Southern drawl, too gentle for the mouth it’s coming out of, and it makes Dean’s heart catch in his throat.

He shifts back, so his shadow is out of the way and the lights of the harbor illuminate the vamp’s face.

Blue eyes, irises threaded with red. A salt-and-pepper scruff of beard. And a grin Dean hasn’t seen in two years, except in his dreams.

He freezes.

“ _Benny_?”

 


	2. Chapter 2

There’s no reply. For a moment, Dean can’t move. He stares at Benny’s face, still and deathly pale in the weak light from the harbor. When he blinks it’s like he sees Benny in that other place, the dream-place that looked like Purgatory, the vision from Magnus’s spell. Sees his sorrowful eyes and his sad, patient little smile; hears his voice saying words that Dean knew didn’t belong to him. Feels the breath go out of him as Dean sinks the knife between his ribs.

He breathes in hard, presses his eyes closed and opens them again. This isn’t that. That was a hell of a lot simpler, because that wasn’t Benny.

He grabs Benny’s shoulder and shakes him, but he’s out. Eyelids fluttering weakly; black threads of dead man’s blood working their way up his neck and spreading across his face.

Dean does his best to tamp down on his instinctive spike of panic, on the memories of all the other times he’s seen Benny on the ground after a fight and rushed to help him. This isn’t one of those times. This isn’t Purgatory, and this might be Benny, but it isn’t his friend. 

He sits down firmly on Benny’s legs, just in case he decides to make a break for it. Not that the weight of a single human would do much to hold back a vamp at full strength, but Benny’s half-conscious from dead man’s blood, and not showing any sign of moving.

The vamps in the boat have cast off. They’re already disappearing into the harbor lights and the dark water, not looking back. No sign of the others, so maybe they left out the back entrance. If Dean’s lucky—as in, a hell of a lot luckier than he has been since he landed in this goddamn timeline—then maybe they won’t clock him.

Underneath him, Benny groans. His face twists up with pain for just a second before going slack again, and Dean can’t help the pang in his chest.

This isn’t his friend. 

Yeah. Easier to tell himself that than to make himself believe it.

Dean does the math. 1959. This is Benny back before he met Andrea, before he started _seeing something_ in humans. No less monster than anything else Dean’s ever sent to Purgatory. He should end it right here. Find a weapon while Benny’s out of it and finish him off before he recovers, before he can take off and start drinking people again.

That’s what a hunter’s instincts would tell him to do. That’s what Dean’s instincts should be telling him to do.

But then there’s the time travel thing. If he kills Benny now, before he ever learns to give a fuck about humans, he never ends up burning to get out of Purgatory and get revenge on his maker. Maybe he never finds out about the portal, never shows Dean the way. And if Dean never gets out of there, he never ends up right here, right now. And if he isn’t here—

Well, it’s enough to make his head spin, but Dean’s watched enough crappy sci-fi to know that paradoxes like that are supposed to be world-meltingly bad ideas.

Yeah. He’ll go with that. That’s why he can’t do it. Not the wrenching sense of unfairness the whole thing gives him—the idea of Benny never finding Andrea and his redemption, never getting to be the good man Dean knew. (Will know. Whatever.) It’s a good reason; a practical one. One he can’t argue with himself about.

Leaves him with a whole bunch of other problems, though. He can’t exactly let Benny go. Chances are, he’ll run back to the nest, and now he knows they’ve got a hunter on their ass. Dean can’t afford to deal with a whole boatload of vamps deciding to turn around and hunt _him _. He has a job to do.__

__Plus—well. If he can keep Benny from killing any more innocent people while he’s here, then that’s a couple fewer deaths for Benny to have on his conscience when he finally figures out eating people is wrong._ _

__A couple fewer deaths on Dean’s shoulders, too._ _

__So, yeah. Here’s the question: what does he do with a drunken sailor? Or in this case, a half-dead, blood-drinking sailor?_ _

__Dean looks around. He doesn’t know exactly how long he was in the warehouse, but it had only just gotten dark when he snuck inside. Night’s still young, and he’d be a hell of a lot more comfortable trying to sneak a half-dead vampire back to his rented room in the small hours of the morning, when it’s quiet._ _

__Still, people who live around the docks must see all kinds of weird shit. From a distance, this is just gonna look like a really drunk guy being carried home by his friend. Not gonna make them bat an eyelid, even this early in the evening._ _

__Dean pulls Benny’s collar up and his hat down over his face, hopefully covering up the creeping black of the dead man’s blood, and any fangs that might decide to put in an appearance. Then he hoists Benny’s arm around his shoulders, and gets to his feet with a groan._ _

__Benny’s about as heavy as he looks and it’s all dead weight, so by the time Dean’s gotten him away from the harbor and on the road to the apartment block, he’s sweating. He pauses in the mouth of an alley off the main drag, props Benny against the wall as best he can and ducks out from under his arm. His breath mists the air, cold pinpricks of moisture dotting his forehead._ _

__“Man,” he says, scrubbing at his face. “Anytime you wanna start walking, that’s fine by me.”_ _

__He’s talking like he would if this was the Benny he knows—if they were still in Purgatory, and some monster had gotten the drop on them and knocked Benny out._ _

__Dean closes his eyes, leans back against the wall and wills himself not to think about that right now. He’ll get used to it. Not like he has a choice._ _

__“Your friend okay there?”_ _

__Dean’s eyes snap open, his heartbeat rattling in his ears, blinking at the voice’s owner._ _

__It’s a guy a little younger than Dean, dressed in the same kind of uncomfortable suit, thick wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Doesn’t look like a cop, and from the direction he’s facing, he came down the road from inland and not from the waterfront. So, probably not a vamp, either. Dean lets himself relax a little._ _

__“He’s fine,” he says. “Just needs a minute.”_ _

__“If you say so.” The guy doesn’t move off, though. He stays where he is, eyes narrowing as he zeroes in on the dark patch on Benny’s face, the dead man’s blood working its way through his veins. “Looks nasty.” He reaches out, looks like he’s about to tug at Benny’s collar to take a better look._ _

__Dean moves quicker, though, grabs the guy’s wrist before he can get any closer and grips it hard. He stares the guy down, and after a half a second’s hesitation, the guy takes his arm back, holding up both hands in a placating gesture._ _

__He doesn’t leave, though. Just keeps right on looking at Dean, one eyebrow raised in question._ _

__“Got in a bar fight,” Dean says, finally. “He’s had worse.”_ _

__“You need some help?”_ _

__“It’s fine. I got this.”_ _

__The guy either doesn’t hear him or isn’t paying attention, because he takes a step forward and drapes one of Benny’s arms over his shoulder to support him, motioning for Dean to take the other._ _

__It takes a second for panic to kick in, because apparently some fundamental part of Dean’s brain is still convinced that this is A-OK, this is his friend and not six-feet-one-inch of dangerous bloodsucker. His eyes flick to Benny’s face, watching for who-knows-what. A sudden start awake? A flash of fang, a sly sliver of bloodshot iris underneath a slitted eyelid?_ _

__Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t see it. Benny’s head just lolls forward, and the guy gives Dean an expectant look._ _

__He shoulders Benny’s other arm. “I _said_ I got this,” he says._ _

__The guy shrugs. His fingers are at the cuff of Benny’s shirt, Dean notices, then. Lingering over the pulse-point._ _

__“It’s fine,” the guy says. He puts his head on one side. “Besides, even an unconscious vampire is a two-man job.”_ _

__Dean’s fumbling for his gun before the guy’s words are even done registering with his brain._ _

__The guy doesn’t flinch when Dean points the gun at him—steady, even though he has to aim it with his left. He just holds out a hand, which looks kind of awkward with Benny’s unconscious weight still supported by his other shoulder. “Randolph Warren,” he says._ _

__“Warren.” Dean blinks. “From the magic store?”_ _

__“I guess you could call it that,” Warren says, mildly. “Mr. Wu across the street told me there was a customer this morning. Can’t say it’s a regular occurrence.” He cocks his head again. “I’m assuming that was you.”_ _

__Dean stares at him a moment longer, then tucks the gun back into the waistband of his jeans and gives Warren’s hand an awkward shake. “Yeah,” he says._ _

__“Hunting?” Warren says then, and his eyes flicker to Benny’s face. And, crap, this throws up a whole new set of problems. Warren may not be a hunter himself, but it’s pretty clear he’s part of the life. Humans good, monsters bad, the fucking end. If he figures out Dean’s got no intention of ganking the vampire he’s dragging through the streets, he’s gonna have questions._ _

__“Actually,” Dean says, with a jerk of his head in Benny’s direction, “not the job I’m here for.”_ _

__Maybe he should ask Warren about the key now; take his attention away from Benny. That’s the whole reason Dean’s in nineteen-fifty-goddamn-nine anyway, and it has to be a hell of lot more interesting than one vampire. But Warren’s sharp, might see it for the distraction it is. Every instinct in Dean’s brain tells him he doesn’t want this guy poking around in his business. At least, not the parts of it that involve not killing Benny._ _

__“But you are a hunter,” Warren goes on, while Dean hesitates. “Or anyhow, you don’t strike me as someone who takes in monster strays out of the dumbness of his heart. So you think this one knows something.”_ _

__“Uh,” Dean manages. “Yeah. Yeah, I figure he might.”_ _

__Warren nods. “So, I’ll ask again. You need some help?”_ _

__Dean closes his eyes briefly. Back in his own timeline, half the hunters in the country would rather walk on hot coals than work a job with the Winchesters. He never thought he’d find himself missing that._ _

__As things are, looks like there’s no persuading Warren to quit. Dean’s just gonna have to hope this doesn’t all blow up in his face._ _

__“Sure,” he says. “Could use a hand with the heavy lifting, anyway.”_ _

__They make their way to Dean’s shitty rented room mostly in silence, and if Warren notices that Dean is careful of Benny’s feet on the stairs—that he carries him like he’s a person, not two hundred pounds of monster meat—he doesn’t mention it._ _

__He doesn’t even lift an eyebrow when Dean guides them over to the narrow single bed and drops Benny down on it. It creaks and wobbles precariously under his weight, but it holds._ _

__“You’ll need restraints,” Warren says._ _

__He’s right. Dean’s been so focused on getting the guy out of here before he can get any ideas about ganking Benny that he’s almost forgotten about that._ _

__Benny may be out of it now, but when he wakes up? He’s gonna be weak, but he’s also gonna be pissed, and in possession of a mouthful of weaponry—and right now, he doesn’t know Dean as anything but the pain-in-the-ass hunter stalking his nest._ _

__Taking prisoners wasn’t in the plan. Dean’s thinking about how he’ll have to head back down to the docks and swipe a length of rope or something when Warren says, “I have cuffs.”_ _

__“At the store?”_ _

__“In my car. It isn’t far. Wait here; I’ll go get them.” He glances back at Benny, prone on the bed. “And maybe then we can start getting some answers.”_ _

____

 

\----

 

Dean peers through the window blind as Warren leaves, watching his figure disappear down the street and around the corner. 

Great. He still isn’t a hundred percent on telling Warren why he’s really here—at least, not right now—but it’s starting to look like he has no choice, not if he wants to keep Benny’s head attached to his body. He sighs and scrubs at his eyes.

There’s a groan from the direction of the bed that makes his breath catch. 

He hasn’t bothered to switch on the lamp, and there’s something about the dim light filtering through the drapes that puts him in mind of Purgatory. How it was never fully day there, but never fully night, either, and you couldn’t really tell if that was because of the canopy of leaves keeping the light out, or some permanent cloud-cover up above the treeline, or if the place just didn’t have day or night like Earth did. 

They only ever stopped moving when Dean needed to sleep. The weird day-and-night stuff meant his internal clock was screwed, so that usually translated into Benny noticing he was ready to drop from exhaustion and refusing to go on until Dean got a couple hours’ shut-eye. Then he’d sit up with his back against a rock or the trunk of one of Purgatory’s huge, ancient trees, and keep watch while Dean slept. 

Just once in a while, Dean would wake up slow, and his eyes would find Benny’s profile in the dim light as he slid back toward consciousness. Benny would be sitting exactly where he was when Dean shut his eyes, steady. Sometimes he’d be humming something under his breath, low enough Dean would have to strain to hear it, the fingers of his left hand moving unconsciously on his knee.

After a while, Dean figured out they were chord shapes. That Benny must’ve played guitar, once, back when he was alive. 

How precise he must’ve had to be, with those big hands, to make an instrument sing. How careful. When Dean remembers now, the fact that he never got to hear it, never found the time to ask, aches somewhere under his ribcage. He can’t even remember the tune.

Now, Benny sighs in his sleep, a half-formed word that Dean can’t make out. His eyelids flicker; his hand spasms at his side; and Dean just watches him for a second before remembering to grab for a weapon.

Benny subsides into stillness without opening his eyes. Dean keeps eyes on him a beat longer, then exhales and looks out the window.

 

\----

 

It probably isn’t more than ten minutes before Warren gets back, but it’s long enough that Dean comes to a decision.

To his credit, Warren knows how to be discreet. Dean doesn’t even hear his feet on the stairs, just his soft knock at the door.

He opens it a crack, light from the hallway spilling in, and Warren slips through with a duffel in his hands. He pulls out two pairs of cuffs—not demon-proofed, but plenty strong enough to hold a vampire—and hands them over.

Benny’s limp, unresisting as Dean secures him to the bedframe. He never slept in Purgatory—at least, not as far as Dean could tell—and it’s strange seeing him like this, loose and unaware. There’s a faint crease between his eyebrows, though, and it deepens when Dean takes his hand to cuff it. 

Dean resists the urge to give his arm a reassuring pat. Realizes he’s frowning himself, schools his face into calm, and turns back to Warren.

Warren’s holding a small black box, something else he must’ve pulled out of the duffel while Dean’s back was turned. He flips open the lid and there’s a syringe inside, nestled in the deep-blue lining like a piece of jewelry.

Dean eyes it. “More dead man’s blood?”

“The opposite,” Warren says, removing the syringe with a flourish. “We need our big guy here conscious enough to answer questions. And the antidote’s simple enough.” 

He sets down box and syringe on the nightstand and begins to roll up his sleeve. It takes Dean a second to catch on.

The opposite. Living man’s blood. Seems too simple to be true.

Warren catches him looking. He sets down the syringe and pulls something else out of his pocket. A little silver tin—a snuff box, only when he flips open the lid, there’s a fine green powder inside. 

“The active ingredient,” he supplies, in answer to Dean’s questioning look.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Dean says. 

Warren smiles. “Luckily for us, the antidote’s nowhere near as strong as the poison. Takes a lot more living blood than dead to bring a vamp back to full strength. And anyway—” He jerks his head in the direction of his bag, and Dean sees a handle, the gleam of a blade inside. “—we won’t be keeping our bloodsucker around long enough to find out, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Right.” He hesitates a moment while Warren picks up the syringe again and pokes at the inside of his arm. “Actually, you think it can wait? I mean, I’m down with taking out the nest, I get it. But I came here for a reason. It’s kind of important.”

“More important than saving innocent people from getting their throats ripped out?” Warren narrows his eyes.

Dean can’t exactly blame him. Can’t say he wouldn’t be suspicious, in the same situation.

Still. “Actually, yeah,” he says. “It kind of is.”

Warren goes still. “Well,” he says. “I gotta hear this.”

“Try closing the gates of Hell,” Dean says. “Forever.”

“You’re joking,” Warren says, flatly. 

His face has gone expressionless. Cautious. Dean recognizes that kind of caution. Comes from having had your hopes shot down a couple too many times; from being afraid to have them anymore.

Every hunter has a tragic story, though, and Dean doesn’t have time to sympathize. He puts on his best _no-time-for-your-bullshit_ look—the one he usually reserves for dealing with Crowley—and says, “Do I look like I’m joking?”

Warren’s expression doesn’t change. “You meet a lot of professional liars in this line of work.”

Can’t argue with that. “Yeah,” Dean says. “And most days I’m one of ‘em, not gonna lie. This, though? I’m not bullshitting you. And I’m not gonna pretend it’s an easy fix. Hell, you knew how far I had to come to even be telling you this, you wouldn’t believe me. But I’m looking for something, and you’re my best chance of finding it.”

Warren looks at him a moment longer, still careful, but then says, “Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”

Dean sighs. He perches himself on the end of the bed, next to Benny’s motionless feet, and after a moment, Warren pulls out the rickety chair and sits. 

“It’s a key,” Dean tells him. “But I mean, we don’t know if it _looks_ like a key. Matter of fact, we don’t know what it looks like at all. Just know that last time anybody heard of it, it was here. This harbor.”

Warren nods slowly. “Your source reliable?”

Metatron, reliable. That’s a good one. “Hell no. Guy’s a shitweasel. But if anybody knows what they’re talking about, it’s him.” Dean makes a face. “Sadly for me.”

“A key that can lock the gates between worlds.” Warren’s frowning, thoughtful. “Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. Gonna have to consult the catalog.”

Dean blinks at him. “You have a catalog? Of—magic dimension keys?”

“Of valuable mystical artefacts. It’s a lucrative market. Traders like me need to know our stuff.”

“What, so you can sell to whatever asshole offers the going rate?”

“Some do.” Warren meets his gaze. “Me, I’m a hunter. I check my buyers out first. Give me some credit.”

Dean shakes his head. “Okay. So, magical-whatsit-catalog. Let’s go take a look.”

Warren casts a glance back at Benny’s prone form as they leave. Dean catches his eye.

“Don’t worry, man,” he says. “I’ll take care of it.”

Warren doesn’t exactly look happy, but he slips out the door ahead of Dean. As Dean’s closing up, he almost thinks he catches a movement through the crack, just the tiniest shift of Benny’s head. When he opens the door again to check, though, Benny’s dead to the world.

 

\----

 

“Here.” 

It’s drifting toward dawn, but Warren’s coffee is industrial-strength—even if it does taste like bong water—and Dean’s wired enough that he startles and sits up in his chair at the sound of Warren’s voice. 

“What?” he says. “You got something?”

“Possibly.” Warren pushes his reading glasses up his nose and reads out, “‘The Key of Annwn’. Celtic. This might be what I was thinking of.”

“The key of what now?”

“Annwn. The land of the dead, in some mythologies. The lore says—” Warren pauses, reads. “—the key was given to Pwyll, a prince who did a favor for the king of the underworld. No details on what the key actually was.” Warren deflates, frowning down at the page. “It’s never been bought or sold. Opinion on whether or not it actually exists is divided.”

Dean sighs and swallows more shitty coffee. “Great, that’s helpful.”

“Tell me about it.” Warren runs a hand through his hair. “Haven’t heard word of anything that sounds likely, either.”

“Yeah. If somebody around here had found this thing—you’d be their first port of call, right?”

Warren nods.

“So, whoever has it probably has no clue what it is.”

“Sounds likely.” Warren gets to his feet and makes for the coffee pot. “I’m gonna do some more digging, now I’ve got an idea what we’re looking for.” He inclines his head in the direction of the door. “You could do worse than snoop around the harbor. See if anybody’s shipping anything that sounds like our key.”

He grabs another book off the shelf while still pouring his coffee. Dean has to hand it to the guy—he gives his all to his research. He seems to have forgotten about Benny, too—or at least, he hasn’t mentioned him since they arrived at the store. Dean grabs his jacket and heads out before he can.

 

\----

 

When Dean gets back to his room, he finds Warren’s syringe—and, more importantly, the little box of green crap—still there, lying untouched on the nightstand. Mercifully, Benny’s still there too.

Or maybe not mercifully, because Dean hears a muffled groan as soon as he opens the door.

He closes it behind him and flips on the lamp. He has to check himself from just leaning right in to look in Benny’s face; has to remind himself to keep back, out of fang range, not to grab Benny’s shoulder and shake him awake or put a hand on his forehead.

He always figured vampires didn’t need to sweat, but from the film of moisture covering Benny’s forehead, they obviously do when they’re sick. ( _Or poisoned_ , Dean’s brain supplies, helpfully. _You poisoned him_.) Benny’s eyelids are half-open, flickering spasmodically, but Dean can’t see any sign of consciousness in there. Under the lids, his eyes are just blank slits. His breathing’s harsh, rapid and pained, and just once in a while, his lips move around a half-formed word. 

Dean squints down at him in the dark. “Hey,” he says. “Benny, man, you trying to tell me something?”

“Old man… won’t like it,” he hears, and then Benny falls silent again.

Here Benny is, half-dead and handcuffed in front of a hunter who he doesn’t know won’t kill him, and he’s worried about pissing off his maker. Something about that fact twists uncomfortably in Dean’s guts; calls to mind every time he ever got blindsided on a hunt and dreaded the ass-kicking he was gonna get from Dad more than the monster trying to eat him.

He tells his brain to shut the hell up. This isn’t the time.

Warren’s box of green stuff—his secret ingredient—sits on the nightstand, gleaming in the lamplight.

This is Benny, but not _his_ Benny. This isn’t his friend anymore. (Isn’t his friend yet?)

Dean looks at the box. At Benny’s face.

He rolls up his sleeve. His thumb catches on the pale raised scar that used to be the Mark as he does so. He doesn’t feel anything from it; hasn’t thought about it at all since he came around in that alley. The image of the dead guy’s face from this morning surfaces in his mind’s eye, and he holds onto it a moment. Just to be certain that all he feels is disgust.

On the bed, Benny makes a low, pained sound. Dean reaches for the syringe.

 

\----

 

By sun-up, Dean has a makeshift bandage at the crook of his elbow, and Benny looks like he’s sleeping. Not just knocked out—actually sleeping. He’s still pale, his breathing labored, but the film of sweat on his brow has dried up, and his face has relaxed, making him look a little more like the old, unflappable Benny, the one who Dean knows. He doesn’t look like he’s in pain anymore. 

Maybe Dean shouldn’t give a shit about that, but it makes him feel better.

Dean hasn’t slept, just sat up in the old wooden chair—which was a bad idea, because now his back seems determined to keep reminding him he isn’t twenty anymore—alternating between watching Benny’s face as he subsided into sleep and puzzling over the whole key problem. The amulet dangles from his fingers, gleaming dully.

It’s still hard to believe that Sammy held on to it all these years. Where did he leave it, before he jumped into the Cage? At Bobby’s? Or was it stashed somewhere in Baby all along, right under Dean’s nose if he’d only known to look? And, harder to figure out—why did Sam hold onto it at all? After everything, all the crap Dean’s pulled, the dark paths he’s been down—that Sam could still be sentimental about it, about him, is a tough thought to hold on to. Dean isn’t sure he really deserves to hold on to it.

So he doesn’t try. He just sits and he waits for the early hours to tick by, and when there’s sunlight creeping in through the slats in the window blind, he stashes his weapons, changes out of the scratchy suit he arrived in, and makes for the harbor. 

He probably could try the whole FBI thing—not like the Men of Letters didn’t pull that shit when they needed to—but something tells him the dock workers who might’ve seen what’s going on aren’t gonna trust some suit from out of town. Dean feels better once he’s back in his jeans, anyway; less like he’s playing Henry Winchester dress-up. 

Nobody bats an eyelid at him out on the street. He scopes things out a little before he starts in with the questions, anyway. There’s nobody at the harbor he recognizes, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t any more bloodsuckers from Benny’s nest hanging around. The guys working there are a little taciturn, a little suspicious, at first—but that’s pretty normal the day after a weird-ass murder. It’d be weirder if they were all scrambling to spill the beans.

Still, if Dean’s gonna keep hanging around here, he’s gonna need a reason. A reason that sounds legit.

So he makes a few enquiries, and after a couple of sullen looks and a couple of bitter comments about how _You know they don’t pay danger money, right, pal?_ he gets pointed in the direction of the harbormaster’s office.

It’s a dilapidated, salt-stained little hut that lists to one side so severely you’d think it had decided to say ‘goodbye, cruel world’ and slip off the harbor’s edge into the sea. Now that Dean has time to stop and take a look around, instead of just keeping an eye out for vamps, the run-down look of the place is visible everywhere: the decaying buildings, the salt-stained harbor, the considerable number of wharves that stand empty. It’s kind of the way recession-hit towns look, back in Dean’s own time. Everything looks tired.

The harbormaster looks tired, too. He’s chugging coffee like it’s going out of style, dark shadows carved under his eyes. From the smell of the office, possibly coffee with a little something extra, which actually sounds like an awesome idea right about now, and Dean wishes he’d thought of it himself. He looks up without much enthusiasm at Dean’s knock on the door.

But when Dean explains that he’s looking for work, the guy actually perks up. 

“You’re braver’n most,” he tells Dean. “Had two guys walk this morning. Talking about serial killers, goddamn _pirates_.” He shakes his head. “Been reading too many of those pulp magazines, you ask me.”

Dean shifts where he stands. “Yeah,” he says. “Sounds crazy.”

“Damn right.” The harbormaster turns back to his coffee. “Anyway, you can load cargo, you’re hired. Start tomorrow. Five AM.”

Five AM. Yeah. Dean’s gonna need to spike his coffee.

 

\----

 

He spends a little more time wandering around the docks after he leaves the office, amulet clutched in his hand. Whenever he sees a stack of crates or boxes ready to be loaded, he slows his pace past it, gives the amulet a chance to work its mojo. 

Nothing happens. 

Okay, so maybe the key isn’t here yet. That’s okay. Dean has a few days. He’ll find it.

The idea of going back to Warren’s store doesn’t exactly fill him with enthusiasm, though. The guy seemed pretty immersed in his research when Dean left, but sooner or later, he’s gonna get back onto the topic of Benny and the nest.

And the idea of going back to his rented room—well. On the one hand, the syringe of mixed blood and green shit Dean pumped into Benny before he left might just have worked some of its magic. The thought makes his insides prickle, uncomfortable. If Benny’s conscious, if he’s getting better—well, he’s getting better, and Dean doesn’t have it in him to regret that. 

On the other hand, when Benny’s unconscious, Dean doesn’t have to face the whole still-a-murderous-bloodsucker issue. If he has to look in Benny’s eyes and see a monster there, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s gonna do.

So, he puts it off as long as he can. He circles the docks twice, grabs a sandwich and a (sadly virgin) coffee, dawdles through the streets leading back to his building. It starts to drizzle, fine but relentless, while Dean’s on his way back, so he ducks under the awning of a grocery store and watches a couple kids splashing about in the puddles, the older one holding her brother’s hand tightly as they jump up and down.

A young black woman wearing a harassed expression ducks out of the store with an armful of groceries, and Dean sees the family resemblance right away—she has to be the kids’ mom. She’d be pretty, if she didn’t look so damn worried.

“Connie!” she calls. “Christopher! Get out of— _look_ at your clothes!” 

The kids scamper over, looking sheepish, and it’s only then that the mom turns to leave and clocks Dean out the corner of her eye.

“Oh!” she says, eyes widening. “I’m so sorry. I hope they weren’t bothering you too much?”

He’s startled enough at being taken for someone who might get offended by a couple of kids playing that he just blinks at her for a moment. Then he gets himself together. “No!” he says. “No, no way.” He points at the package of groceries in her arms. “You, uh, you need a hand with that?”

The young mom frowns, actually looks like she’s considering it for a second, then says, “No. Thank you. I’ll be fine.” 

She gives a tight smile and walks away, kids in tow.

 

\----

 

Dean pulls out the knife tucked into his boot before he opens the door to his room. Checks up and down the corridor to be sure that there’s nobody around. Then he unlocks the door and pushes it open with his foot, keeping his distance just in case anybody—any _thing_ —decides to jump out at him.

Nothing does. The room is still dark, the blind shuttered. Dean slips through the door and closes it behind him. Switches on the lamp.

There’s a sharp intake of breath from the direction of the bed. 

And then a voice drawls, “You mind turning that down a little, friend? Only this really ain’t my natural environment.” 

It just sounds like _Benny_ , and Dean’s stomach does a little flip and he swallows around the sudden dryness in his mouth. This is gonna be harder than he thought.

“I ain’t your friend,” he gets out, but he turns down the lamp.

It isn’t exactly bright in here, but he can just about make out Benny’s face. He’s still pale, and now that they’re open and fixed intently on Dean, his eyes look feverishly bright. He isn’t struggling right now, but the skin of his arms is rubbed raw where the cuffs dig into it, and looking at it makes Dean feel a little sick. 

He blinks and shifts his gaze to the creeping black of the dead man’s blood, instead. Maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks it’s receded a little, shrunk back toward the spot where he dug the syringe in.

“That you ain’t,” Benny agrees, still watching him. “But I got plenty. They’ll be back for me. You’ll see soon enough.”

There’s a glitter in his eyes that isn’t just the fever. Dean recognizes it. It’s faith. The kind you hold onto so tightly it makes you a little crazy because the thought of losing it is like losing yourself. The kind Dean had in Dad, when he was alive, and never let himself loose his grip on. Mostly because he knew, somewhere deep down, he was only ever a heartbeat away from losing it.

“The other suckers from your nest?” Dean meets his gaze. “Sorry, man, they split. You need better friends.”

“Says the guy who’s got me tied to his bed with a knife in his hand.” Benny tilts his head, then, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Dean’s insides squirm. A slow grin spreads across his face. “Even if he might just be the prettiest morsel this side of the Atlantic.”

Benny never looked at him this way before. He might be half-dead with poison, but he’s staring at Dean like he’s a goddamn all-you-can-eat buffet, and it makes Dean painfully conscious of the warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart and how it speeds up under that look. The blood in his veins.

The guy who had his back all through Purgatory wants to eat him. Or maybe—

No. He squashes down that train of thought. 

What they had in Purgatory was simple: brothers in arms. And if Dean ever had any thoughts that might have complicated it, well, he shoved them down into the same dark crevice as everything else that wasn’t blood and survival. 

And Benny never looked at him like that. Only this isn’t Benny.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean sleeps—kind of—in the rickety chair, slumped over the equally rickety desk in the corner with his jacket folded up for a pillow. He’s awake by the time dawn starts filtering in through the blinds, leaning over the bed to check Benny’s face for signs of consciousness.

They didn’t talk much more, last night. Dean ignored Benny’s creepy-ass comment, just drawing another syringe full of blood, adding a pinch of Warren’s green stuff and jabbing it into Benny’s vein, doing his best not to look too careful about it. Benny ignored Dean’s dig about his nestmates, and he passed out again a couple minutes after Dean gave him the antidote. It was like the living blood wanted him unconscious while it did its work. He’s still out now, only he’s frowning in his sleep again, and he seems to flinch away instinctively when Dean gets too close.

Dean tries not to think too hard about what that’s all about.

He digs in his duffel for clean clothes, shrugs off his shirt and steps out of his jeans to change. It isn’t like he’s ever been self-conscious—a lifetime of shared motel rooms and zero privacy will do that to you—but he finds himself picturing the weird way Benny looked at him last night and feeling like his skin is too hot for the draughty room. A prickle runs down his spine, hot-cold like a momentary fever. 

When he turns around, Benny’s still unconscious. Nobody’s watching him.

Dean heats up water on the single burner in the corner of the room, swallows his coffee hot enough that it burns his mouth. Wipes the syringe clean of blood. 

He should probably find somewhere to hide Warren’s green crap while he’s out. Benny didn’t learn all his tricks in Purgatory; his time with the nest must have taught him a thing or two. If Dean leaves the antidote in easy reach, there’s every chance that once he starts feeling better, Benny’s out of here—and looking for his living blood somewhere else. But if Dean has the antidote stashed away, then escaping isn’t in Benny’s best interest so long as he needs it.

Dean lets himself out into the corridor and takes a good look around. He pushes at a loose board in the floor with the toe of his boot, but he figures that might be too obvious. Loose brick in the wall, same.

When he gets to the stairwell, though, a ventilation shaft catches his eye. He glances up and down, listens out to be sure nobody’s coming, and then gets to work loosening the cover with the point of his knife as a makeshift screwdriver. It doesn’t take long, and once he’s hidden Warren’s box of green stuff inside, Dean leaves the screws at the bottom loose. Nobody’s gonna notice unless they’re actively looking. The antidote should be safe until it’s done its thing. 

Of course once Benny’s feeling better, Dean’s gonna be stuck figuring out what to do with him. 

Benny has to stay alive. Has to meet Andrea; has to give up killing and get killed in return; has to end up in Purgatory when Dean gets zapped there. That doesn’t happen, there’s all kinds of disastrous timeline-fuckery on the cards. Dean can’t just let him go off alone, though. Any innocent person he kills because Dean didn’t take him out when he had the chance? That’s on Dean. 

But Dean only has a few days here. He has to get the hell out of this timeline once he has the key. Can’t hang around to vamp-sit. So far the only option he can think of is handing Benny over to Warren, which is as good as a death-sentence, far as he can tell.

He sighs and scrubs at his eyes. Decides to check in on Benny one last time before he leaves.

Benny’s still out. Dean locks the door behind him.

 

\----

 

The job mostly consists of hauling crates, which is about as exciting as it sounds. Boring as shit and hard on the muscles, but it means Dean’s close to the merchandise. If the key comes through here, it won’t be too far from him. The _Rosa_ —the ship where the key was last heard of—hasn’t come into the harbor yet, but it can’t be long before she shows. The cargo she’s collecting might already be here somewhere, in one of the warehouses along the water’s edge. 

Dean does his best to act friendly, but he still catches a couple of the other guys eyeing him sideways when they think he isn’t looking. He can’t exactly blame them. Some random dude shows up looking for a job the day after a grisly murder, you’re gonna figure he’s either a freak or had something to do with it. 

So he keeps a lid on his questions, for now. He has a couple days here. If he can get them to stop looking at him like that, start talking when he’s around, then he’s probably gonna find out more than he would by pulling the fed act and interrogating them. He keeps smiling, works fast and puts his back into it, and by the time they break for lunch, the others seem to have thawed toward him enough that Walt, the foreman, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Dean.

Yeah, this is the fifties. Everybody smokes. Dean smells like a damn ashtray just from standing around them.

He takes the proffered smoke, though; rolls it between his palms as he listens in on the hum of conversation. Dead alley guy’s name, he learns, was Joseph Stubbs, and as far as anybody knows, he was the first vic—though in a job like this, guys come and go all the time. Disappearing’s easy, and times are tough around here at the moment. Somebody doesn’t show for work, you probably assume they just split, decided to try their luck somewhere a little more secure.

Dean glances along the harbor. The empty warehouses that line the streets; the empty wharfs along the front. That must be one of the reasons the vamps are hanging out here. They can take their pick of disused buildings, go unnoticed among the ebb and flow of people at the harbor.

Still a little weird, though. Far as Dean could tell, Benny’s nest always hunted rich people. Yachts and stuff. Boats with small crews that were easy to take out, not the cargo and passenger liners that dock here.

He frowns, looks at Walt, who’s several minutes into an epic grumble about how many of the guys he started work with here ten years ago have quit and moved away. 

“Wasn’t always a ghost town around here, though, right?” Dean asks him.

Walt scowls and spits on the floor. “Wasn’t so long ago, this place was so busy you coulda walked from here to Washington Street without putting a foot on the harbor. ‘Course, since they built the hurricane barrier, the only folks that can get upriver are the rich jackasses in the marina.”

Dean’s eyes widen. “There’s a marina around here?”

“Sure.” Walt raises an eyebrow. “You really are new in town, huh?”

Dean shrugs. “Yeah.” Walt’s still looking at him a little strangely, though, so he elaborates: “Been staying with an old friend. He was gonna show me around some, but he got sick. Been kinda on my own since I got here.” 

The lies roll off easy, and hell, Dean could almost believe them himself. The idea that Benny’s gonna wake up and recover and then they’re gonna be friends again, just like old times—it almost feels realer than the truth.

Walt shrugs, and turns to his sandwiches. Dean tucks the cigarette behind his ear.

He’s about to head out in search of some food himself when he sees a figure hovering uncertainly around the mouth of one of the narrow streets leading up into town. He squints, and realizes it’s the woman he saw yesterday in front of the grocery store—the mom with the two young kids. She looks kind of lost.

Dean heads over to her, raising a hand, open palmed. It’s half greeting, half gesture of reassurance. _Look. See? Not a threat_. He sees her hesitate before meeting his eyes.

“Hey,” he says, coming to a stop in front of her. He keeps his distance. A little further than necessary, probably, but hey. She looked freaked out yesterday, and when there’s supernatural nastiness in the area, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on freaked-out people. Preferably without freaking them out any further.

Suddenly, he wishes Sam was here.

The woman nods, but she doesn’t greet him out loud.

“You looking for someone?” Dean asks. “Only I’m pretty sure you ain’t hanging around here for the scenery.” Then he winces internally at how much like _What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?_ that sounds. The woman doesn’t seem to notice, though, just gives him a faint smile.

“The harbormaster’s office,” she tells him. “Do you know where it is?”

“Sure.” Dean points at the sagging building. “It’s the Botox patient over there.”

The woman looks at him in confusion. “The what?”

“Never mind.” Dean shakes his head. “The one that looks like it’s gonna fall down next time somebody sneezes at it.”

“Ah.” Her expression clears. “Thank you.” She pauses. “And—you’re wrong.”

Dean blinks. “About what?”

“The scenery.” She glances out at the boats. “I never saw the sea before I left home. It’s all new to me.” Her expression turns open and wondering, just for a moment, as her eyes linger on the horizon. Then it clouds. She ducks her head, and makes for the office.

She’s left home. Two young kids in tow. And, at a guess, she’s headed to the harbormaster to book passage on the first ship out of here. Now, that sounds like somebody running away from something.

Dean’s watching her go when there’s a shout from the waterfront. “Winchester! Less flirting, more working.”

“I wasn’t!” he protests. 

Despite the snort he gets in return, it’s true. And that’s weird.

 

\----

 

Dean gets back to work. He makes himself useful—volunteers for whatever needs to be done, and gets a look at most of the docks in return. 

The amulet stays cold against his skin. By the time Dean clocks out for the day—sore-eyed and aching after his shitty night’s sleep and hard day’s work—he’s found squat. Still, maybe Warren’s found something he can use.

The magic store should be his next port of call—but curiosity and a faint tickle of hope in the back of his mind get the better of him, so instead, Dean heads upriver, toward the marina.

The place is pretty quiet, so he strolls along the front. Casts an eye over the names of the boats, their salt-stained hulls and folded sails. He keeps his ears open, too. This is the kind of place Benny’s nest liked— _like_ —to hunt, right? If there are any vamps still hanging around here, then they might just be prowling around. 

Nothing stands out among the boats at first, but then Dean doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for. He doesn’t recognize it, for a moment, when he does find it. His eyes skim over the name _Artemis_ , and he’s already walked past the yacht when the name catches at his consciousness. 

Goddess of hunting. 

_Greek_ goddess of hunting. 

What are the odds?

The boat looks deserted, but there’s a guy on the next one along. He’s crouched over some task on deck, his back to the shore.

“Hey,” Dean says, but the guy doesn’t seem to hear him. He takes a step closer to the edge, looks down into the darkly lapping water. “Hey!” he calls again, louder.

This time, the guy turns around. He looks like the kind of dude you expect to see on a yacht, too clean and shiny to be hanging around the water’s edge at dusk, and there’s something disdainful in the way he looks Dean over with one eyebrow raised.

He’s the only potential source Dean has right now, though, so he shrugs off that contemptuous look and asks, “You know who this boat belongs to?”

The guy raises an eyebrow. “Why on earth would I tell you?”

Dean grits his teeth behind a smile. “Maybe I’m looking to buy.”

The guy smirks. “Even if you could afford to, good luck getting between _that_ one and her boat.” There’s an edge of bitterness in his voice. 

Blood in the water. Dean smirks. “ _Her_ , huh?” He raises an eyebrow. “Pretty?”

The guy snorts. “Yeah, only I never met a piece of ass stuck so far up her own ass before.” He tosses a coil of rope down on the deck, probably a little harder than necessary. “Dumb foreign slut, Italian or something.” 

It’s the forced, fake ignorance of a guy who’s gotten shot down and is failing to pretend he doesn’t give a shit. Hell, Dean might feel bad for the guy, if—well. If he wasn’t this guy.

“Greek?” he suggests.

The guy shrugs, goes back to his—whatever he’s doing. “Maybe.” The set of his back stiffens up. Remembering that he’s forgotten himself, talking to dockside scum. “Not that I’d tell you.”

That’s okay. Dean has enough. 

He casts another glance over the name of the boat and grins to himself. “Hey,” he tells the guy’s back. “Least she didn’t turn you into a deer.”

The guy turns and blinks at him in confusion. “What the hell?” he says, but Dean is already walking away, a new swing in his step despite the exhaustion he can feel in his bones.

Maybe he shouldn’t admit it to himself, but this is a weight off his shoulders. Now he thinks about it, the timing’s right. He doesn’t know exactly how long Benny spent sailing around the world with Andrea before his maker caught up to them, but it could’ve been a couple years, easy. All Dean has to do now is get Benny fixed up and keep him away from the nest until Andrea’s boat is scheduled to depart. Then he can go find his girl and his salvation. No more dead bodies on either of their consciences.

It’s a relief. That’s all.

So Dean tries not to think about their weird little exchange, last night—about the way Benny’s eyes raked over him like he was dinner, or about the brief rush of heat he felt, being on the receiving end of that look. The memories that thinking about it churns up inside him: brief looks and briefer touches, almosts that never were. That he never let himself think about, shouldn’t be thinking about now.

He turns away from the harbor, shoves his hands in his pockets, and makes for the store.

 

\----

 

Warren’s still immersed in his research when Dean arrives. He answers the door book in hand, and Dean would think that he hadn’t gotten out of his chair all day, except that the stack of papers on the table has tripled in height since Dean left.

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Hey,” he says, picking his way across the floor around piles of books that weren’t there last night. “You got anything?”

Warren frowns at the book he’s holding. “Maybe. The translation isn’t exactly clear.”

Dean shrugs. “So? Spill.”

“Well…” Warren trails off for a moment, his eyes tracking the page as he searches for his place. “It sounds like there’s more to using the key than just putting it in a door.”

“Yeah.” Dean sighs. “Can’t ever be that fucking simple, huh?”

Warren blinks a couple times, and Dean remembers that, oh yeah, he’s in the past. Maybe even hunters mind their language in polite company.

Is Warren polite company? Dean doesn’t know. 

Either way, the guy collects himself pretty quick, giving Dean a dry smile. “Of course not,” he says. “Unfortunately for us, whoever translated this was more interested in poetry than accuracy. But he says that using the key requires its _essence_. Maybe there’s a way of extracting its power, something like that. I haven’t found it yet if there is.” Warren sets down the book. “You have any better luck?”

“Nope.” Dean shrugs off his jacket. “I got jack. Looked around the harbor, but—” He breaks off around a yawn.

Lugging boxes around is tiring in a different way from hunting. There’s no adrenaline to keep him going; no sudden crash at the end that has him struggling to keep his eyes open. He just feels like he’s spent the day being flattened out a little at a time. His shoulders ache, and his spine cracks when he stretches.

Warren raises an eyebrow and nods at the coffee pot. Dean figures that means he’s allowed to help himself. He’s chugging the stuff like liquor today.

“So,” Warren says, once Dean’s gotten Operation Stimulant under way, “that brings us to our other problem. Anything out of our vampire?”

Dean looks down into his coffee mug to hide his hesitation. “Not yet.” He lifts it to his mouth and takes a swallow. “Still seems pretty out of it.”

He isn’t lying. Not yet.

“The antidote should be working by now,” Warren says, frowning. “But there are all kinds of factors. Keep at it.”

Dean blinks and looks up. “What kinds of factors?” His brain starts running scenarios before he can intervene and tell it to shut up. If Benny isn’t fixed up before Andrea leaves, if he never runs into her—what happens then? And if he’s still unconscious when Dean has to go back to the future?

“Difficult to say,” Warren replies, with a shrug. “It’s far from an exact science.”

“Right.” 

Benny never gets Dean out of Purgatory, Dean never comes back here, never runs into him in the first place—yeah, he’s pretty sure that’s the kind of paradox that makes worlds explode or something. 

Dean feels his heart sink. His whole life is a series of worst-case scenarios. What are the chances he’s screwed the damn space-time continuum just by showing up here? Screwing things up is kind of his specialty, after all.

Half-consciously, the fingers of his left hand find their way beneath his shirtsleeve. They hover over the Mark, but it’s inert, no pulse of heat and rage threatening to break out from under his skin. Just scar tissue. Just dead space.

Warren’s looking at him. Dean unfolds his arms and reaches for a book.

 

\----

 

The antidote is still stashed in its hiding place in the vent when Dean gets back. He stuffs it into his pocket and heads back to his room to check on Benny, who’s still passed out and waxwork-pale on the bed. 

Dean watches him for a moment, then sighs and turns away, rolling up his sleeve. 

He doesn’t look at the Mark. It doesn’t stand out red on his skin, the way it used to, and in the dim room he can almost pretend it isn’t there. He doesn’t feel it either, most of the time. No throb like a drumbeat in time with his heart; no voice whispering destruction in his ear. Just, sometimes, a sound sliding past his consciousness as he surfaces out of sleep, faint, like a car engine three miles away in the dead still of a summer afternoon. So distant it hardly even feels real. 

Sometimes, when he’s busy, he even forgets about it completely. Like today, at the docks. Between hauling crates around and asking questions, he barely even thought about the damn thing. It’s only times like now, with tiredness fraying the edges of his mind, that he dwells on it.

That might be the scariest part of the whole mess. How sometimes he isn’t scared of it anymore.

Dean grits his teeth and sinks the needle into his vein, watches the syringe fill up with blood and doesn’t look at the Mark. He’s careful as he injects Benny with the antidote. Not gentle, exactly, but careful. There’s no satisfaction in it; he makes sure of that.

It’s a moment before the blood-and-green-crap mixture has any effect. Benny doesn’t come around all at once, but some of the tension drains out of his face, the frown that he wears when unconscious fading away. He exhales, slow and heavy, and then goes still again.

Dean turns away and digs in his duffel for the bottle of cheap-ass whiskey he picked up on his way back from Warren’s store. He pokes around in the dusty cupboard by the window and comes up with a couple of dusty tumblers, wipes one of them out with the end of his sleeve and pours a couple inches into it.

“Ain’t gonna offer your guest a drink?”

Dean starts and turns around. Benny’s still pale, but his eyes are open, bright in the lamplight, and he’s smirking. It’s an expression that could almost belong on the Benny who Dean knew. Almost. 

Benny always looked at the world with a kind of rueful smile—but with _his_ Benny, the amusement was mostly world-weariness, when it came down to it. Laugh because otherwise you’ll cry; Dean could relate. This is sharp curiosity.

Dean takes a swallow from his glass. Benny’s eyes follow the movement as he tips his head back; lock in on the working of his throat. He scowls. “I look like an all-you-can-drink buffet to you?”

Benny raises an eyebrow. “Was talkin’ about the whiskey, but one’s as good as the other, I guess.”

“Not funny,” Dean says.

“No, it ain’t.” 

Benny’s face goes serious for a moment. Dean finds himself noticing how pale he is—the unnatural sheen to his face, the kind of uncanny-valley look it gives him. How the skin around his eyes looks sore. 

Warren said the antidote should be working by now. But vamps get weaker the longer they go without feeding. From what Dean overheard at the warehouse, Benny’s maker has been keeping his people offshore, on lockdown. 

Maybe it’s been a while. Maybe Benny isn’t gonna get better until he gets living blood to drink.

Dean pulls out the chair and sits with his back to the door. Whiskey in easy reach; knife easier.

A smile tugs at the corner of Benny’s mouth as he watches. “So,” he says, “we gonna sit here staring at each other all night?” It’s a drawl; easy, like they used to talk to each other in Purgatory, once they’d gotten past the initial distrust and started insulting each other like old friends. “Not that I ain’t appreciatin’ the view, but there’s only so much quiet a man can take.”

“You ain’t a man,” Dean points out.

Benny shrugs, inclines his head to concede the point. “And you ain’t from round here.”

“How do you figure?” Dean asks, and then kicks himself for it. He shouldn’t be getting drawn in; should be keeping everything locked down tight, not answering on instinct, like this is the Benny he knew. Not giving Benny the chance to get under his skin, figuratively or otherwise.

“Well, this place ain’t exactly lived-in.” Benny glances around the room. He has a point; he’s spent more time here than Dean has, so far. 

Still, Dean’s here to do a job. That’s all. Or, that was all, before Benny showed up and complicated things. Dean doesn’t need to move in. He shrugs.

“That,” Benny goes on, “and ain’t nobody around here from around here. I know these kinds of places. Everybody’s running away from something.”

“Yeah, and right onto the menu for you assholes.” Dean snorts. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re interested in my life story. Far as you’re concerned, I’m lunch.”

He spits it out, glaring at Benny like it’s a challenge. Like Benny’s gonna spread his hands and say, _Hey, you got me._

Maybe that would be good. Maybe Dean needs the reminder.

Benny doesn’t rise to the bait. He just looks at Dean, something in his expression that Dean can’t get a read on. When he glances down, though, he realizes his fingers are just below the crook of his elbow, worrying at the fabric of his shirtsleeve where it covers the Mark. 

He feels himself flush, scowls and reaches for his glass.

“Brother, I ain’t in any position to judge.” Benny shifts a little, wriggling himself upright so he’s half-sitting against the headboard, propped up on his elbows—as far upright as he can get with his wrists cuffed to the bed. It looks uncomfortable as hell, but it lets him look Dean in the eye. “Hell, you don’t even care what I think.” He cocks his head a little. “Do you?” 

There’s as much curiosity in it as anything. Benny’s trying to figure Dean out so he can make a getaway—of course he is—but you wouldn’t know it from the open expression on his face.

Hell, maybe it’s not just one thing or the other. Maybe Benny’s just bored.

Not that that changes anything. Dean huffs and hunches forward in his chair, doesn’t answer.

“Okay,” Benny says. “You don’t gotta tell me what you ain’t running away from. How about what you’re looking for?”

Dean frowns at him. “What makes you think I’m looking for anything?” 

He doesn’t think he’s given anything away so far. Benny was out cold during his conversation with Warren, and they haven’t exactly talked since.

“Well, first off, you’re a hunter. No such thing as a hunter without a mission.” 

Dean shrugs.

“And then there’s the little matter of me still bein’ alive.” Benny’s gaze is steady. “You think I can help you, one way or another. One of my kind kill your girl, something like that?”

Dean breathes out through his teeth. That he’s just looking for one specific vamp—well, that’s the reasonable conclusion. Every hunter’s got one extra special monster at the top of their to-kill list. Plus, if that’s what Benny thinks, it means he likely doesn’t know anything about the key. Which is probably for the best. Dean doesn’t need Benny getting mixed up in the job he’s actually here to do.

“None of your damn business,” he says. 

“That right?” says Benny. “Because you’re looking at me like _I’m_ the one took away your girl.” Dean doesn’t answer, so he goes on. “Brother? Sister? Kid?” He pauses. “Army buddy? You got the look.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean looks right back at him. “Keep guessing, I ain’t gonna spill.”

“That you ain’t.” 

The way Benny’s looking at him, now—there’s a hint of that hunger from last night, but mostly it’s something more than that. Intense. Gives Dean this uncomfortable feeling, like maybe Benny _isn’t_ screwing with him. 

Benny shrugs, then—least, as best he can with his hands cuffed to the bedframe. “Figure it has to be something like that, though. Whatever you’re doing here, you believe in it. Like maybe it’s all you got.”

It doesn’t mean anything. The job might be all Dean’s got, but that’s true of every hunter ever. Doesn’t mean that Benny knows anything about him. Doesn’t mean he understands, like he did. Will do. Whatever.

“Hell,” Benny goes on, “back at the warehouse? You walked in on five of my kind without anybody watching your back. You don’t mind if it kills you. Means you believe in it, means it’s bigger than you. You know you ain’t the only guy ever felt like that about something.”

“You say you know how it is,” Dean grits out, “and I swear I’ll knock both sets of your teeth out.”

“Well,” Benny says, “don’t I?”

Dean’s sure there were details Benny left out, when he told Dean about the nest he’d belonged to. Still, what he did say was enough. The Old Man; the isolation; the lengths they went to to track Benny down when he left them—all of it sounded more like a cult than a regular gang of bloodsuckers. Maybe Benny really did—really _does_ —think of it like that. Something bigger than himself. Something to belong to.

Not that that’s an excuse. Dean swallows the rest of his whiskey and pours himself another. “Killing people and letting their families think they drowned?” he says. “Yeah, that’s a real noble cause you got there.”

He isn’t expecting this version of Benny to get defensive, but he doesn’t know what he is expecting. Not for Benny to sink back against the headboard and say softly, “It sure ain’t,” anyway.

Dean frowns and looks up from his drink. Benny’s face is half shadowed, eyes glinting in the dark, but the sharp edges and the curiosity are gone. His expression is soft, resigned.

Their eyes meet, just for a second. Dean looks away.

Hears Benny clear his throat. “But what you’re doin’ here,” he says. “That is a noble cause, huh?”

It should sound like a taunt. It doesn’t.

Dean doesn’t answer, and Benny doesn’t push him. When Dean looks back over at him, a couple minutes later, his eyes are closed.


	4. Chapter 4

Benny’s quiet for the rest of the night. Dean doesn’t think he’s sleeping, or unconscious, or whatever vamps are when they’re out of it, but he doesn’t say anything. Just lies there looking at the ceiling and not at Dean. When the sun starts to creep in between the slats of the blind, he doesn’t react.

Dean doesn’t notice, at first, but when he finds himself blinking and getting up to stop the light from shining in his eyes, he realizes that’s kind of weird.

Sunlight doesn’t kill vampires like _Buffy_ would have you believe, but they’re not exactly its biggest fans, either. Benny wore sunglasses most of the time when he got back to the real world from Purgatory, pulled his cap down low over his eyes when the sun shone.

Dean frowns. Grabs for his knife just in case this is some kind of a ruse, then leans over the bed and waves his hand in front of Benny’s eyes.

“Hey,” he says.

Benny doesn’t answer. His eyelids are half-closed, and they flutter weakly at the sound of Dean’s voice. They’re the eyes of a drunk in a bar, half-dozing before he sways right off of his stool. Or of somebody half-conscious with a fever.

“Hey,” Dean says again, and snaps his fingers a couple times in front of Benny’s face. “You with me?”

Benny gives a couple slow blinks. When he opens his eyes fully, it takes him a moment to focus in on Dean’s face.

“With you? Looks that way,” he says thickly, and then he gives this weird, faint smile before closing his eyes again.

Dean risks reaching out to grab his shoulder. Shakes him. No response.

“Dammit, Benny,” he mutters.

He rolls up his sleeve with trembling hands; has to close his eyes and breathe deeply to steady them before he draws another syringe of his own blood. The tiny catch of Warren’s snuff box is suddenly too small for his fingers. Dammit, Dean can shoot to kill and take heads off in one clean sweep when he’s surrounded by monsters, but right now he feels like he’s all thumbs, his hands too slow while Benny lies there looking sicker than he has since Dean stuck him with dead man’s blood. He doesn’t even flinch when Dean jabs the syringe into his neck.

Dean’s pretty sure his earlier guess was right. Warren said the cure might take a while, but he didn’t say anything about Benny getting _worse_. Either Warren got it wrong, or Benny’s weaker than he should be. Starving.

Doesn’t explain why he hasn’t at least tried to make a lunge for Dean’s jugular. Sure, he’s chained to the bed and it’d be kind of pointless—but keep a vamp hungry long enough, and logic tends to go out the window. Benny warned Dean about that himself. He should’ve tried something by now.

Still, Dean doesn’t have a better explanation. He adds, ‘Get some blood from somefuckingwhere’ to his mental to-do list. There has to be a butcher or something around here somewhere, right? He knows it doesn’t slake the thirst the way human blood does, but Benny got by on monsters in Purgatory. Animal blood can’t be that much different.

Making mental notes isn’t helping Benny any. He’s still pale, eyes still closed, and there’s sweat beading on his forehead. His right hand twitches, a little jerk like when you’re halfway to sleep and you dream about falling.

Vampire medical care isn’t exactly Dean’s strong suit. Sure, he and Benny both got knocked around some in Purgatory, but it wasn’t like there was a drugstore on every corner. A quick wash up in a stream and a couple hours’ rest if they were lucky was all they had time for. Dean doesn’t know if any of the things you’d do to fix up a sick human would even work on Benny.

Still. He can’t just stand here and do nothing.

When they were kids, and Sam got sick, Dean would tuck him up in bed and soak a washcloth in cold water to soothe his aching head. He’d heat up soup in the microwave if they had one, and then they’d both sit up in one of the motel beds, read comics or watch TV until Sam fell asleep.

Well, soup wouldn’t be any use to Benny, and apparently cable doesn’t come as standard in 1959. But there’s a small hand towel on the rail by the washstand. Dean grabs it and soaks it under the faucet, folds it over and goes back to the bed. He lays it carefully across Benny’s forehead. He’s on his toes, ready to jump back out of reach at any moment, but Benny doesn’t try anything. No sudden movements; no hint of fang.

After a couple minutes, though, Benny lets out a sigh and blinks his eyes open.

“How you feeling?” Dean asks. It comes out gruff, but Benny doesn’t flinch. He meets Dean’s eyes, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile.

“Like some hunter stuck me full of dead man’s blood, then tied me to his bed for two days straight. And not in the fun way.” Then Benny, raises an eyebrow. “But you know, I think he might be growin’ on me.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Be serious.”

Benny shrugs. “Helps with the fever some. Could use something to drink, though.”

“Not funny.” Dean scowls—but Benny’s smile has faded away. The spark that lights up his eyes when he’s teasing Dean or pretending to flirt with him has vanished, and it leaves him looking bone-weary.

“Wasn’t trying to be,” Benny says. “I need water. Won’t help none with the other kind of thirst, but I feel like I swallowed a bucket of sand here.”

Dean hesitates. There’s a tumbler sitting on the desk, sticky inside with the dregs of last night’s whiskey. He rinses it in the sink and fills it with cold water. Grabs the knife out of his jacket with his free hand before he heads back over to the bed.

“No tricks,” he warns.

“I look like a magician to you, brother?”

Dean sighs. But Benny’s right—he’s in no position to attack anybody right now. So Dean leans down and holds the glass of water to his lips.

He takes slow sips, eyes slipping closed again. Makes a small noise of relief in the back of his throat. Dean holds the glass steady, though putting his arm this close to a vampire’s fangs goes against every instinct and every shred of common sense he has.

He needn’t have worried. Benny drains the last of the water and sinks back against the pillows.

“Thank you,” he says, and it sounds—sincere. More genuine than it should be, with the fact that Dean’s still basically his jailer.

There’s relief there, and Dean feels a little spark of pride despite himself, same way he used to feel when Sammy finally stopped sniffling and decided he wanted to get out of bed after an afternoon of soup and cartoons and Dean trying not to look like he was watching his brother anxiously out the corner of his eyes.

It’s dangerous, that he feels like that now. He needs to shut it down.

“Yeah, well,” he says, setting the tumbler down on the desk. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I’ll try.”

“Sure,” Dean says. He pulls the blinds fully closed so the sunlight won’t fall on Benny’s face, and turns away before he can see Benny looking at him. He grabs the antidote, pulls his jacket on, and heads out the door.

 

 

 

 

\----

 

“Three tens.” Richie’s grinning, leaning back in his chair like he’s already won. Kid’s a cocky little asshole with a permanently plastered-on grin, and Dean would be lying to himself if he said Richie didn’t remind him at least a little of himself ten years ago.

Difference being, Richie never had to play cards just to stay alive. You never lose your survival instincts; not a hundred percent.

At least, that’s what Dean’s always thought. Though when he remembers this morning, feeding a vampire with his own hand, talking to him like he’s the real person Dean will know fifty years from now—well, he figures maybe he doesn’t know that quite as well as he thought.

It’s a slow afternoon and the weather’s turned to shit, all leaden sky and relentless drizzle, so they’re sheltering in a hut near the water’s edge, playing cards to pass the time. The little room is thick with smoke, and Dean’s gonna smell like an ashtray by the time he gets out of here. But hey, it’s dry, and he’s already won fifteen bucks, which is apparently a lot of money in a game like this in 1959.

Dean frowns down at his cards. Holds the expression for a minute, letting Richie keep his grin for a minute longer. He’s never been able to resist stretching it out, playing it up a little. It’s almost gotten his ass kicked a hundred times, but it’s never stopped being fun.

“Hey,” Richie says, magnanimously, “we can play again.”

“Yeah?” Dean raises an eyebrow and lets his disappointed look turn into a smirk. “’Cause I’m pretty sure you’re out. Straight flush.” He drops his cards. Richie glowers.

“Jesus,” he complains. “You get all the luck.”

Dean doesn’t say anything sarcastic to that, which as far he’s concerned is more than heroic enough to earn him that winning hand. “It’s all skill, man,” he says. “Ain’t your fault you’re playing the master.”

“Shut up.” Richie glowers, and shoves the little pile of greenbacks in the middle of the table over to Dean.

He pockets them, stands and stretches, looks out the window at the rain.

There’s a tap at the door.

Dean’s closest, so he opens it. There’s a young woman standing outside. The mom from the grocery store. He blinks in surprise.

“Uh,” he says. “Can we help you?”

She looks just as surprised to see him, but she doesn’t comment on it, just presses her lips together and says, “I’m looking for Mr. Stanton. Do you know where I can find him?”

Dean turns to look at the other guys. “Stanton? Anybody know who he is?”

“Sure,” says Walt. “He owns a couple cargo boats. One of ‘em comes in tomorrow. The _Rosa_.”

The woman’s eyes widen. “That’s the ship I’m trying to book passage on.”

“He’ll be over with the harbormaster if he’s here,” says Walt.

Same office Dean pointed her to yesterday. He looks back at her. “You want somebody to go with you?”

The woman gives him a measuring look, and after a moment, she nods. “Thank you.”

Dean hears a mutter, somewhere back in the room, as he steps outside and shuts the door. He doesn’t really hear it, and when the woman’s lips thin, he decides he’s probably better off for it. Easy to forget that no cable TV isn’t the worst thing about the 1950s.

“So,” he says, to break the uncomfortable silence. “You travelling somewhere?”

She’s quiet for a moment, and Dean figures she’s deciding whether or not to answer. “Boston,” she says, eventually. “Maybe New York. I’ll start fresh somewhere. Doesn’t have to be far, just—somewhere I don’t know anybody.”

There’s a troubled look on her face, and every instinct Dean has wants to ask her what she’s running away from. He has to remind himself that she’s got nothing to do with the vamps, isn’t a potential victim or a potential monster—just an innocent passer-by who happens to be sharing a city with them. He doesn’t talk to many people like that.

He settles on a safely boring topic, instead. “Why not just take the train? Gotta be less hassle than this.”

A shadow crosses her eyes, just for a second. Then she shrugs. “My father worked on boats his whole life. Said he felt weighed down on land. I’ve always preferred to travel that way.”

Dean would bet money there’s more to it than that, but hey, it’s none of his business. “Well,” he says, “gotta be an adventure for the kids, right?”

At that, the woman smiles faintly. “Connie’s already figured out exactly how she’s going to save her little brother from drowning.”

Dean can’t help smiling back. “Sounds like someone I know.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You have children?”

“No,” he says, too quickly. Hesitates; gives her a tight smile. “Uh—forget I said anything.”

Her smile fades, but her eyes linger on his face a moment longer. It takes Dean a second to catch on. She thinks he’s running away from something, too. She nods, then, and says, “It’s forgotten.”

“Alright.” They’ve reached the office, and Dean nods in the direction of the door. “Well, this is it.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t move to open it, though, and they stand there long enough for the moment to grow awkward.

“So,” Dean says, at last. “Good luck, uh—?”

The woman hesitates for a moment, then holds out her hand. “Faith,” she says, and after a second, adds, “That’s my name.”

“Dean.” They shake. She squeezes his hand briefly before turning away and opening the door.

 

 

 

\----

 

It’s early evening by the time Dean finishes his shift. He’s aching all over and he’s had no luck with the damn key, but he has one more errand to run before he can head back to the hotel room.

Dean can’t begin to guess how Benny’s doing right now. Still, he can’t keep from remembering how pale and tired he looked this morning—or how his voice sounded when he said _Thank you_ , like Dean was his goddamn saviour, or how sometimes, when he smiles, it’s hard to remember that he isn’t _Dean’s_ Benny.

Dean tramps around the streets for a while, searching, and he’s starting to think he really should’ve asked Faith where she does her grocery shopping, when he rounds a corner and the distinctive smell of a butcher’s store hits him, meaty and metallic in equal parts.

There’s a guy pulling down the shutters, ready to close up for the night, and Dean quickens his pace. He gets there just as the guy’s opening the door to head back inside.

“Hey,” he says. “Hang on!”

The guy turns back, looking unimpressed. “I’m closing up.”

Dean sighs. “Yeah, I can see that. Look, this is gonna sound weird, but it’s urgent. Can you sell me some—”

“Blood?” The butcher puts his head on one side. “You’re here for your friend, right?”

Dean stares at him for a moment, hand going automatically to the inside of his jacket. The butcher doesn’t seem to notice the motion, though. He just opens the door and steps inside, leaving it open like he expects Dean to follow.

Dean touches the handle of his gun and stares after him. His brain takes over, then, as the initial kick of surprise wears off.

The vamps have been hanging out here a little while, right? And he heard Sorento say that their boss had banned them from feeding off of humans onshore. They have to be getting their sustenance somewhere. So maybe they’ve had the same idea as Dean. If that’s the case, it makes sense the butcher would assume Dean was one of them, maybe filling in for the guy who usually makes the blood run. There’s no reason to assume he knows about Benny.

Dean doesn’t let his guard down—stays ready to grab for his gun any moment, just in case—but he follows the guy inside.

All that happens, though, is the place smells a whole lot worse on the inside than it does from the street, and when Dean leaves with a container full of pig’s blood for Benny, he spends a full five minutes thinking that he might never eat a rare steak again.

He’s cautious on the way back to the room. If Benny’s nest have been buying from the butcher, there’s always a chance one of them is lurking around there right now, might catch a glimpse of Dean and decide to follow him. So he weaves and dodges through side-streets, goes back on himself and around in a circle more than once, and by the time he gets back to his rented room, darkness has well and truly fallen.

There’s silence when he unlocks the door.

“Benny?” he says, quietly.

A low groan is the only response he gets.

“Fuck.” Dean closes the door—carefully, so it doesn’t slam—and switches on the lamp.

Benny doesn’t say anything, doesn’t give any kind of indication he knows Dean’s in the room. Dean grabs the tumbler off the nightstand and rinses it out in the sink. Then he refills it with blood from the container the butcher sold him.

Just a couple inches. He figures the principle’s probably the same as with humans who are starving. Too much at once and Benny might just puke it all up, and Dean definitely doesn’t want to have to deal with that kind of clean-up.

His hands shake as he pours. He tries hard not to think about why.

Dean sits on the edge of the mattress, not worrying too much about keeping a safe distance this time. It’s obvious that Benny’s in no shape to attack him. He stirs weakly as the mattress dips under Dean’s weight, but his eyes are half-closed, not tracking, and his breathing’s shallow.

There’s a knot in Dean’s stomach, and he isn’t even thinking about the fangs when he reaches out to tip Benny’s head up and puts the glass to his lips.

For a moment, Benny just lolls there, his head a dead weight in Dean’s palm.

Then he blinks. Once, twice. Dean tips the glass so that blood wets his lips. A drop dribbles down into his beard.

“Benny.” Dean squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again. “C’mon, buddy. Stay with me. I know it ain’t exactly freshly-squeezed Type O, but this is gonna help you feel better, okay? Just a little. _Please_.”

There’s a tremor in his voice that makes him shut up, then. He puts the glass back to Benny’s mouth.

It’s slow when it happens. Dean’s seen vamps get their fangs out, and usually it’s quick, just like in a horror movie. This is slow. Benny opens his mouth—just a little, like the movement is unconscious, and his fangs just start to creep out, peeking through like baby teeth. He sips at the blood. Swallows weakly. Takes another sip.

And yeah, it’s pretty fucking gross to watch, but Dean can’t find it in him to care.

“Yeah,” he says, in his best upbeat voice—which okay, isn’t much, but he’s trying. “Yeah, that’s the stuff. You’re fine. You’re gonna be fine.”

A few moments pass before Benny’s eyes open fully, and he actually looks at Dean. He’s conscious.

He’s conscious, and now Dean’s painfully aware that he’s sitting on a bed next to a vampire, hand-feeding him like he’s a baby goat. He shifts where he sits, pulls the glass away from Benny’s mouth.

Benny blinks up at him, then cracks a smile. Cartoonishly grotesque, what with the blood dribbling out the corners of his mouth. “Room service?” he rasps. “Brother, you shouldn’t have.”

Dean’s so relieved to hear him speak that he forgets the position he’s in long enough to laugh. “Don’t get used to it.”

Benny swallows. “Sure thing,” he says, still smiling. “Ain’t like I get this kind of luxury every day.”

There’s blood on his teeth, making it look like he’s just been punched in the mouth. Blood staining his beard. He looks more like a monster than he has since he first came at Dean in that alleyway.

And it doesn’t make a single bit of difference. Dean can’t help it. However careful he is, however hard he tries to keep the timelines separate in his head, this is still Benny. Still his friend, even if Benny doesn’t know that yet.

He shoves the glass at Benny. “Keep drinking.”

Benny does as he’s told. He finishes the glass, and another one too, and by the time he’s done, he’s sitting up—as best he can with his wrists still cuffed to the sides of the bed anyway—under his own steam, a little of the color returning to his cheeks.

Dean turns away to rinse out the tumbler in the sink—yeah, washing up after a vampire, every bit as disgusting as he expected it to be—and when he turns back, the smile is gone from Benny’s face.

His eyes are sharp, now; focused. It’s like the air in the room changes, and Dean finds himself shifting from one foot to the other under Benny’s scrutiny.

“Dude, what?” he demands, scowling.

Benny puts his head on one side, the gesture slow, deliberate. “I figure it’s about time for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” He pauses, waits for Dean to meet his eyes. Dean knows he shouldn’t, but he does. “What’s a hunter doing patching up one of my kind?”

Dean looks away, helps himself to a slug of whiskey. “Sue me if I don’t wanna let my only lead drop dead before I follow it.”

“Just keeping me alive for my intel? Brother, you wound me.”

“What the hell else would it be?”

“You tell me.” Benny’s voice is level, but his eyes are bright. Curious. “See, you ain’t asked me one single question about the nest since you got me up here. And whatever you’re doing out there in broad daylight, it ain’t hunting vampires. You wanted to find the Old Man, you woulda tried beating a location out of me already.”

“Your nest ain’t the only thing I gotta take care of,” Dean retorts. “You ain’t that important.”

Benny shrugs. “Maybe not.” He says it like it hardly matters, like he doesn’t really care what Dean might do to him in future. “Thing is, you were all set up to kill me until you saw my face. Which means you know me. Now, I never forget a face, and I sure wouldn’t forget yours.” He pauses just for a second, like he’s waiting for a reaction. Dean scowls harder. “So the question is, how?”

“Don’t know what to tell you, man.” Dean takes another gulp of booze. “I ain’t your stalker. I saw an opportunity and I took it. Nothing else to it.”

Benny just shakes his head. “Brother, I been hanging around liars and thieves since before you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. Gonna take a better liar than you to fool me, and you know it.”

_I don’t get lied to._

It’s giving Dean motion sickness, hearing the future echoes of his Benny in this Benny’s voice. Worse, it’s making him feel like an asshole for not being straight with him, even though Benny doesn’t exactly have the moral high ground here.

He rubs at the back of his neck. He’s too damn tired for this. Between the job and the nights spent sleeping in a rickety chair, his joints are complaining like hell, and there’s a twinge in his spine working itself up into a pounding headache.

“Benny,” he says. “Dude. Look, even if I did know something—and I’m not saying I do—I couldn’t tell you about it. So just fucking drop it.”

Benny raises an eyebrow. “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“Now see, I don’t recall ever telling you my name.”

If that isn’t the rookiest of rookie mistakes. Dean looks away, mentally kicking himself. “Yeah, well. Guess one of your bloodsucker buddies let it slip back at the warehouse.”

“Whatever you say.” Benny gives an amused little smile, and Dean feels like he’s being patted on the head. Humored like a little kid.

It’s weird as hell, hearing that in Benny’s voice. Back in Purgatory, even when Dean was being the stubbornest sonofabitch in the whole damn dimension, Benny never gave up on being honest with him. Never pretended to believe they were gonna find Cas when Dean was dragging them into fight after fight looking for him. Never encouraged Dean’s stupid hope that all three of them would make it through the portal. It was a pain in the ass at the time, but Dean got to appreciate it, later. Benny never lied to him. Might be the only person who never did.

Not that he’s really lying now. For all that Benny’s the bad guy in this time and place, Dean’s still the one who’s full of shit.

Dean sighs. “Yeah, well. That’s all you’re getting.”

“Seems a little unfair though, don’t it?”

Dean blinks. “What does?”

“You know me, and I don’t even know your name.”

Dean realizes he’d actually forgotten about that. Maybe it’s just that he’s weary enough to drop, but he can’t keep the lines straight between this Benny and the one he knew, between his friend and the vampire chained up in his room.

He gives a mirthless smile. “Name’s Wayne,” he says. “Bruce Wayne.”

“Ain’t that something outta the funny papers?” Benny pauses. “I ain’t asking much, brother.”

There’s a reason the lore is full of stories about dumbasses who give their names to supernatural creatures and end up captured, brainwashed, cursed—even dead for their trouble. Even if they’re not witches or fairies, or any of the other nasties who can get a hold over you that way, it’s still a bad idea. Makes them think that they know you. That you’re the same. Makes _you_ start thinking that way, if you’re not careful.

Dean’s known all of that as long as he’s known monsters are real. Still, he rolls his eyes and says, “Fine, if it gets you to stop bugging me. I’m Dean.”

He finds himself holding out his hand as if to shake, an instinctive gesture that he pulls back from as soon as his brain catches up. Benny stares at him, just for a second. He covers it up with a smirk pretty fast, but for a moment there’s a flash of something startled and vulnerable in his eyes.

And that—yeah, that’s not helping Dean keep the lines straight one bit.

“Good to meet you, Dean.” God help him, Benny actually sounds like he means it. “I’d shake your hand if I could, but…” He shrugs.

“Playing nice ain’t gonna get you out,” Dean tells him.

“That right?”

Dean’s on his guard right away. Okay, so maybe his instincts aren’t _that_ confused just yet. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Benny just smiles back at him. If it wasn’t for the blood around his mouth, he’d look totally harmless. “Just talking sense, brother.” He glances at the door. “You got that antidote stashed away somewhere safe, right?”

Dean narrows his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Now, for whatever reason, you won’t kill me. You’re trying to fix me up. So if I kill _you_ , I kill my chances of a cure. That sound about right?”

“Guess so.”

“So we find ourselves at an impasse. And that bein’ the case—” He indicates his bonds with a nod of his head. “Seems there ain’t much use for these.”

Dean ignores him.

“I won’t hurt you. Hell, you could probably take me down anyway right now. You got my word.”

Something twists painfully in Dean’s chest. “And what the hell is that worth?”

“It’s good,” Benny tells him, and hell if there isn’t a hint of wounded pride there. “My nest knows that.” His voice turns quiet. Disappointed.

He sounds sad—a bone-deep kind of sadness, the same kind Dean heard in his voice after he had to leave Carencro and Elizabeth behind. It’s so damn human.

Dean shouldn’t trust it. It’s just that he’s lied so much already. It aches somewhere deep in him, in a place that’s been aching since Sammy and Cas de-demonized his ass, and maybe since long before that. He wants to tell the truth, be trusted like Benny trusted him back in the future.

Not that he deserved that, in the end.

“That ain’t all I’m worried about,” he says. From the way Benny’s looking at him, the warring emotions are obvious on his face. “I got your word you won’t take off and hurt anybody else?”

There’s a long moment where Benny just looks at him. Surprise on his face; but it’s a world away from the _You stupid asshole_ kind of surprise. Dean can only make sense of it if he thinks Benny’s been being straight with him, so he gives up on trying.

“You got it,” Benny says, then.

Dean takes a deep breath. “Fine,” he says, and reaches for the key.

 

 

 

\----

 

Benny’s as good as his word. When Dean lets him out of the cuffs, he gets to his feet—hands held out, empty palms on display—and then ambles over to the sink to splash water on his face and scrub the clotting blood out of his beard. When he rolls up his shirtsleeves to wash his hands, his wrists are rubbed red raw from the cuffs.

He’s only been on his feet a couple minutes when Dean sees him wobble. Dean jumps up before he even registers what he’s doing, instincts sharpened in Purgatory—when barely a day went by without one of them taking a blow to the head—surfacing like they never went away. He grabs Benny’s arm to steady him, feels Benny’s weight lean into his side.

He turns his head—which puts their faces uncomfortably close together—and finds Benny giving him a rueful smile. “Looks like you really did a number on me with that dead man’s blood,” he says. His voice rasps, a little unsteady.

“Shut up and sit,” Dean tells him, and half-walks, half-hauls him back over to the bed. Benny sinks down onto it gratefully, his arm falling from around Dean’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Dean,” he says, and Jesus, Dean wishes he’d stop sounding so damn genuine.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and starts to pull away.

Benny’s hand catches his wrist. His grip is weak, and Dean could pull out of it if he tried, but the surprise is enough to stop him. Benny tugs at his arm, pulls him closer again until he has to sit on the edge of the mattress.

It’s weirdly familiar. Reminds him of how they’d sit side-by-side or back-to-back, nights in Purgatory, when the light was too bad and the terrain too unfamiliar for them to travel, but neither of them was tired enough to sleep. They’d make a fire if it wasn’t too risky, and Dean would watch Benny’s hands as he gathered dead wood, his face in the flickering light, and try not to think too hard about why he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

They’d talk, then. Though really, Dean did most of the talking. About Sam, about Cas, about the first thing he was gonna do when he got topside, which varied from power shower to cheeseburger, depending on whether the grime or the gnawing hunger was pissing him off most at the time. Benny didn’t volunteer much in return, and Dean didn’t ask—afraid, he guessed, of starting to think of his new ally as being too human.

Well, look how that turned out.

Everything’s different now. Dean knows all about Benny, and Benny knows nothing about him. Or at least, no more than the fact he’s a hunter with a job to do, which ought to be enough to make him dinner.

Still, Benny’s looking at him like he’s more than just prey.

It’s a curious look. Intense. Makes Dean feel like maybe Benny doesn’t know _nothing_ about him, after all.

Benny lets go of his wrist, then. Touches his arm. His shoulder. The side of his face. Leans into him.

A tiny part of Dean’s brain—the only part of him that has any common sense left, maybe—thinks, _Fuck, he is gonna try to kill me after all_. Then Benny’s lips touch his, and the sensible part of his brain is stunned into silence.

Maybe it’s some kind of vampire mind-reading crap that future-Benny was too good to use on him. Only thing that could explain how this Benny knows things that even Dean’s Benny didn’t—things that Dean didn’t even let himself know, not where he could be conscious of them.

That, or it’s a mindfuck and Benny’s trying to take him by surprise, distract him so he can make a run for it. This has to be a ruse. Not something Dean can believe in.

Dean’s sits frozen on the edge of the bed, his arm still caught in Benny’s grip. Then Benny is pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth, and pulling away from him looking like he’s finally figured something out.

Dean swallows. Touches his mouth with his free hand. It tingles.

Benny’s smiling at him. Smiling with his eyes. They’re all creased up at the corners and he isn’t saying anything, just studying Dean like he’s waiting for an answer. An answer he’s sure he’ll get.

Dean gets to his feet. Reaches for the machete sitting on the desk. The key to the handcuffs.

“Get back on the bed,” he says.

Benny goes without resistance, like he was kind of expecting it. But he keeps on watching Dean with that look in his eyes, and even hours later with his head heavy from exhaustion, Dean can’t sleep for thinking about it.

 


	5. Chapter 5

They don’t talk about it.

By morning, the rest of the blood has coagulated into a clotty mess in the bottom of the carton, so Dean pours some water into it and stirs until it seems to be mostly liquid again. Benny doesn’t look too impressed, but Dean’s trying real hard not to care what Benny thinks, so he just tips the whole thing into a glass, shoves it in the direction of Benny’s face and growls, “Breakfast.”

Benny drinks obediently and doesn’t bitch about it. His throat works as he swallows, and Dean tears his eyes away the second he catches himself looking, bracing himself for a snarky comment.

But Benny stays quiet while Dean washes up and changes with his back to the bed, avoiding the thought of Benny’s eyes, while he draws a fresh syringe of blood to mix up with the antidote. By the time he’s ready to leave for the harbor, Dean’s actually starting to wish Benny would make some smartass remark or ask him some too-searching question, just so he’d have somebody to argue with.

He’s still antsy and ill-at-ease when he arrives at the waterfront, eyes gritty from too little sleep, spine cracking when he stretches. What he wouldn’t give for a goddamn bed. 

A bed without a confusing, possibly-evil version of his friend in it. Who kissed him—and no, no, not thinking about that right now, maybe not ever. He has a job to do.

Dean goes through the motions, heaving crates around and speaking when spoken to, grateful for the quiet when he pointedly isn’t invited to join in the game of cards when they break for lunch. The amulet is tucked under his shirt, but it stays cool against his skin.

It’s early afternoon when he catches sight of Faith again. She’s walking along the waterfront, this time with the kids in tow. They trail behind her, holding hands, the elder kid—Connie?—guiding her little brother around the puddles, chattering away as he stares up at her with big, round eyes. 

Dean gives Faith a wave as she passes him by. She stops, nods to him and says, “Nice day, huh?” but her smile is tight.

“You looking for the harbormaster again?” Dean asks her.

“Not today,” she says. “Sorry, I’m real busy. We have to go.”

As she speaks, Connie tugs at her arm. “Mommy? Can we get icecream?”

Faith frowns. “Honey, I already said no. Money doesn’t grow on trees, Connie. We have to be sensible.”

The little girl nods and looks down at her shoes, her expression solemn. 

It’s like she’s used to not having the things other kids take for granted, used to things being tough. Not used to it enough that she’s stopped asking yet, though. Dean catches sight of her squeezing her kid brother’s hand as his lip starts to wobble, and he can bet he knows why.

The kid pouts and pulls out of his sister’s grip, a whine of, “It’s not fair!” escaping his mouth as he runs off. 

His shoe catches on a loose stone, and he falls over on the slippery harborside. Connie gives a squeak as he lands, reaching out to him in a useless, involuntary motion.

The younger kid sits up with skinned palms and muddy knees and lets out a wail like an ambulance siren. Faith closes her eyes and gives a brief sigh before she goes over to him.

Dean takes the opportunity to rummage in his pocket for the stack of greenbacks he’s been carrying with him since the future. The Men of Letters weren’t exactly short on cash, and hey, for once, Dean’s actually getting paid for the job he’s pretending to do while he does his real job. He figures he can afford to be a little generous.

He beckons to Connie. It takes him a couple seconds to distract her from gazing in open-mouthed worry at her little brother.

“Don’t tell your mom,” he tells her, with a conspiratorial wink, as he slips her a dollar bill. She looks at it doubtfully, and he nods in the direction of her kid brother. “Icecream’s awesome medicine. Trust me.”

Dean knows parents like Faith, and he knows she’ll come right back here and kick his ass if she finds out. He remembers how Dad bristled at the suggestion of anything that sounded anything like charity. But the way Connie’s eyes light up—then dart straight back toward her sobbing brother—as she takes the bill? Totally worth it. 

Faith scoops up the kid brother in her arms, and Connie runs off after them, her shoes clacking on the harborside. 

Dean doesn’t even notice until they’re gone that the amulet is hot against his skin.

He turns around on the spot. Stares at the nearest stack of crates, as though their outsides might give him some clue as to which one the key’s hiding in. No luck. Apparently the shipping company doesn’t feel the need to label its mysterious mystical artefacts.

The heat of the amulet is already leaking away, and Dean hopes to hell that it’s not just a one-time deal. Should’ve asked Cas for a few more details on how it works. He can’t just grab a crowbar and start ripping crates open left, right, and center out here on the waterfront. He’s just lucky this load is headed into one of the warehouses and not onto a boat. 

He’ll have to sneak back after dark, when he has more time to snoop around, and hope the amulet works for long enough for him to find the thing. 

It’s not a guarantee, but it’s the biggest sniff of a clue Dean’s gotten since he landed back here. When he turns back to his work, Richie squints at him and demands to know what in the hell he’s so damn happy about.

Dean just grins and flips him off. Even heaving cargo around doesn’t feel like such hard work, knowing that he might just have found what he came for.

 

\----

 

Even when he finishes his shift and heads back to his rented room and its confusing-as-fuck occupant, the buzz of excitement doesn’t dissipate entirely. The thought of arriving back home with the key, seeing Sam’s face when Dean tells him they have a chance to save the world instead of screwing it up—as reasons to be cheerful go, it’s a pretty good one. 

Benny picks up on it the second Dean walks in the room. Dean can see it, but he just raises an eyebrow and doesn’t say anything, propped up on his elbows on the bed. Dean finds himself suddenly conscious of the smile on his face; wipes it off and replaces it with a scowl.

Dean doesn’t make conversation, just opens the carton of blood he got from the butcher on his way back and pours half of it into a glass. He doesn’t feel on edge like he did when he left this morning, though, and his embarrassment—or resentment, or whatever it is; he sure as hell isn’t examining the whole thing too closely—about last night is easier to ignore.

When he sits down on the end of the bed, though, Benny turns to look at him and says, “You found something.”

Dean shrugs. “What if I did?”

“Well, that’s good, ain’t it?” Benny sips obediently from the tumbler when Dean puts it to his lips. Swallows. Dean averts his eyes and then looks back before Benny can comment.

There’s colour coming into Benny’s face, now, and the bruise-dark shadows under his eyes are fading. Up close, Dean can see how blue they are, how bright and curious. Not the feral, animal eyes of the bloodlust-crazed vamps Dean takes out on the job, and not the hard blank eyes of the longtime killers. (The kind of eyes Dean spent months looking at in mirrors, before he got control of the Mark—but that isn’t a train of thought he wants to follow right now, or anytime, really.) You could almost imagine there was nothing monster about him at all.

Dean looks down. “That’s none of your damn business, is what it is.”

“Right now, brother, you’re the only business I got.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Another mouthful of blood. Benny spreads his hands—an expansive gesture, if only he wasn’t handcuffed to a bed. “I got four walls and one person to talk to here. Can you blame a guy for making conversation?”

He sounds so damn reasonable about it. Hell, Dean even feels a pang of guilt for all of two seconds before he catches it and squashes it down.

“Fine,” Dean says. “Yeah, it’s a good thing.” He lifts the glass again, but Benny shakes his head.

“I’m good,” he says. 

Dean blinks in surprise, but shrugs and puts down the glass. 

“Have to admit,” Benny says, then, “you got me wondering.”

Despite himself, Dean asks, “About what?”

“You’re a hunter. Now, if all you were doin’ here was hunting down my kind—well, I’d understand it. ‘S the way of things.” Benny pauses. Glances toward the window and keeps looking at it, as though he’s seeing something through the closed drapes. “But you ain’t lifted a finger to find my nest since you brought me back here. So that begs two questions.”

It’s a mind game. Benny’s smart; survived in Purgatory for fifty years on nothing but his wits. That’s what he’s doing now. Trying to get under Dean’s skin, find out what makes him tick and gain his trust. Get him to drop his guard. It’s a smart strategy; the kind Dean wouldn’t have the patience for himself. Something Sammy might come up with.

He keeps on telling himself that. It doesn’t stop him answering. 

“What questions?”

“Well.” Benny shifts and wriggles where he sits, like he’s trying to stretch. “Number one, you don’t seem much inclined to kill me—we established that already. I got my own ideas about it, but you ain’t telling.” He shrugs. “And you ain’t bothered with asking me for information. So why keep me here?”

“That’s easy. Don’t need you running back to your little nest and bringing the vamp cavalry down on my ass.”

“That’s it? Good clean kill’d be much neater, don’t you think? No running around buying cartons of blood, no jamming a needle in your vein to fix me up.” Benny almost smiles, just for a moment. “Nah, it’s something more’n that. Can’t say I know what, but hey, I figure as long as you’re keeping me here, I got time.”

“You’re wasting your time, more like. There’s nothing to figure out.”

“Could be the cabin fever talking, I guess,” Benny agrees. “But I don’t think so. I always could read people pretty good.” He pauses. “And I can hear how your heart speeds up when you’re lying.”

Dean scowls at him. “Sure it’s because I’m lying. Nothing to do with the fact I’ve got a bloodsucking monster for a roommate.”

“You ain’t afraid of me,” Benny says. “Least, nowhere near as much as you should be. But that ain’t the other question.”

“Yeah?” Dean eyes him warily.

“Yeah. See, I’ve run across a hunter or two in my time. Generally speaking, you ain’t what I’d call patient. Letting a nest like mine live, refuel, get itself a new list of targets? Now, no self-respecting hunter I ever met would do a thing like that.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, well, I ain’t much like those self-respecting hunters you’ve been hanging out with.”

Benny makes a noise of assent. “Still breathing, for one.”

“Not helping.”

“Sorry.” 

Benny actually looks like he means it. Makes Dean wonder what the hell he meant by saying it in the first place. From any other monster, he’d take it as a boast—or a threat, or a sick joke. 

Maybe it’s nothing more than that from Benny. Maybe Dean’s just projecting his memories of the Benny he knew onto the one sitting in front of him now.

But maybe not. Maybe it’s a warning. Or a confession.

“Anyway,” Benny goes on, then. “My point is, whatever you got going on here is more important than hunting down a nest of vampires, far as you’re concerned. That means something big.” 

He pauses and looks at Dean like he’s a puzzle Benny’s trying to figure out and put back together. It’s uncomfortable; makes Dean feel more exposed than he did changing his clothes earlier. Benny always could see through his bullshit. The Benny Dean knew never used it against him, though. He knows he can’t trust this version the same way. Knows he shouldn’t want to. 

“It’s something supernatural,” Benny goes on, then. “Gotta be. And it ain’t some monster turf war, because we ain’t heard a whisper on that front. Something new.” He raises an eyebrow. “Or something old.”

Dean doesn’t mean to give anything away, but apparently his face does anyway, because Benny nods and says, “That’s what I thought.”

“What do you care anyway?” Dean asks. “Ain’t like it interferes with your little band of bloodsuckers.”

“Like I said. Four walls, one guy to talk to—can’t help wondering what your deal is.” Benny eyes him shrewdly. “’Cause it is your deal. It’s personal, ain’t it?”

Dean blinks back at him. Opens his mouth to tell Benny to shut his, but gets stuck on the thought of Sam coughing up blood, half-dead in his arms outside that church. Willing to die to close those gates and choked up with anger about it for months afterward. Looking at Dean and seeing a betrayer instead of a brother—for that, and so much other crap, too.

Sam, who he sacrificed Benny for in the first place. What would _his_ Benny think about the whole thing? Would he insist on coming along for the ride, be right here by Dean’s side, if he was still around? If Dean hadn’t killed him?

He swallows. Even now, thinking about it, he feels the memory of dread rising up in his throat; the hole loss has been digging inside him his whole life getting that little bit deeper.

Benny—this Benny, with his sharp eyes—is still looking at him. Dean expects a smartass remark, or another unanswerable question, but instead, Benny’s expression softens.

“Tell me to drop it,” he says. “If you want.”

Dean should take him up on that, but instead, he finds himself shrugging. “’S okay,” he says. After a moment, he adds, “It’s my brother.”

“Yeah?”

“We hunt. Together.”

“Real family business, huh?” Benny gives him a look. “If you don’t mind me asking, why ain’t he around?” It should be a taunt, but somehow it isn’t.

“Trust me,” says Dean, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway—” 

Dean pauses. It occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know if Benny has siblings. Not the nest—though there was some weirdo substitute family thing going on there, for sure—but flesh-and-blood siblings, from when he was human. 

“You got brothers?” he asks. “Sisters?”

“Not anymore.” A shadow crosses Benny’s eyes, and Dean realizes that maybe the reason he doesn’t know is that Benny was deliberately avoiding telling him. 

Dean doesn’t push it. He isn’t sure he wants to hear it from this version of Benny, when the one he knew never told him. “Thing is,” he says, instead. “Me and my brother a couple years ago—we had the chance to do something important. Something good, I mean, I’m talking taking out the Emperor good.” He catches himself and pauses, scrabbling around for a period-appropriate metaphor. “Smashing the Nazis good. No more atomic bombs good.” Dean hesitates again. “And when I say we had the chance, I mean _he_ had the chance. I stopped him.”

Benny raises an eyebrow. “I’m guessing you had your reasons.”

“Try telling him that.” Dean’s voice comes out quieter than he means it to. Tireder. He looks at his hands.

When he raises his head, Benny’s watching him with that same soft expression. Something sad about the eyes.

Jesus. He’s getting sympathy from a goddamn vampire. If that isn’t the universe telling him to quit whining, he doesn’t know what is.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I get it. Why he was pissed. I woulda kicked his ass to Hell and back if he’d screwed the world over just to save my sorry ass.” 

Dean does get it, kind of. He’s thrown his own life on the line plenty of times—going after Metatron, after Cain. He doesn’t like to think about what he might’ve done if Sam had gotten in his way. 

It was never about saving the world, though—not really, not when you get down to the bones of it. Dean isn’t that much of an idealist, and that’s the thing he can’t get, the thing his head just refuses to wrap itself around. The idea of Sam ever feeling as hopeless as he did.

He pushes the thought down, turns back to Benny. “And now we got that chance again,” he says. “Only thing is, we need—” Dean breaks off. Benny’s nest and the hunt for the key may be two different problems, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe letting the key’s existence slip. No sense in getting them mixed up with each other. “We need a couple things. Things that are hard to find.”

Benny nods. “Explains your friend from the magic store.”

Dean nods. He’ll check in with Warren tomorrow. He figures Warren would’ve gotten in touch if he’d found anything else on the key, but if Dean actually finds the thing tonight, maybe Warren will have a better chance of finding out how it works.

“Now, your pal there was all for killing me soon’s you’d found my nest,” Benny says. “But he hasn’t been by since. So either you’re real good with persuasion—” He pauses, eyes flicking up to Dean’s face. “—and that I might be inclined to believe. Or you just ain’t told him you got no plans to off me.”

“Never said that,” Dean says, but it sounds half-hearted even to him.

“You didn’t,” Benny agrees. His voice is mild.

Dean sighs. He’s been trying not to think about it, honestly. The voice in his head that sounds like Dad tells him he should gank Benny right here right now, time paradox or no time paradox, because any unsuspecting passer-by who runs into Benny while he’s on his way to Andrea and redemption? That’s on Dean. There’s another voice that sounds like Cas, solemnly explaining that that would probably fuck the entire fabric of reality around them. 

Then there’s the voice that sounds like Dean. That one just says, _I already killed you twice, don’t make me do it again. Please don’t make me do it again._ Hell, he’d say it out loud if he thought it would help, if there was even a chance Benny would understand him.

Instead, he looks up. Looks at Benny; at the key to the handcuffs sitting on the table. “You gonna be able to keep your hands to yourself?” he says.

Benny blinks back at him in surprise. Then he nods.

Dean grabs the key and sits down on the edge of the bed. He leans over—suddenly very aware of how close he is to Benny, how impossible it is to do this without touching him, fingertips brushing the skin at his wrists—and unlocks one handcuff, then the other. Holds his breath, waiting.

Benny sits up. Rubs at his wrists. 

“Appreciate that, brother,” he says. He keeps himself very still until Dean’s gotten to his feet, and then he stretches and sits up. “For what it’s worth,” he adds, then, “I never wanted to startle you. I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Dean snaps. “And you don’t scare me.”

Benny nods, and gives a faint smile that disappears as quickly as it came.

 

\----

 

Dean leaves him sitting up at the table, sipping blood slowly from the container he picked up from the butcher after his shift. Benny gives him a questioning look when he grabs his jacket.

Honestly, a part of Dean wants to tell him what’s going on. He’s miles and decades away from Sammy and Cas, and just having somebody to talk to about this crap without lying would feel like being able to breathe again. A familiar face. A friendly one.

The rest of him knows that would be a terrible idea. The line between Benny-the-still-possibly-evil-vampire and Benny-his-friend is already way too thin for comfort, and maybe Dean’s just pissed all over it by letting Benny out of the cuffs. Starting to confide in him, too? Yeah, that would be pushing things way too far.

So Dean just shrugs, says, “I got work to do,” closes the door behind him and double-checks the lock.

 

\----

 

The waterfront is deserted, the windows of the warehouse dark. Dean scoped the place out as best he could before he left this afternoon, and he knows there’s a side-entrance that’s only visible from the alleyway. Should give him plenty of time to pick the lock without being spotted.

It’s quick work, and soon enough Dean slips inside, wedging the door open a crack so he doesn’t get stuck. His hand goes to the amulet automatically, checking that it’s still there. It’s warm from his skin, tucked underneath his t-shirt.

He’s been wearing it like that since Sam gave it back to him, and not just so he’ll be able to feel it if it warms up. Seeing it on his reflection kind of gives him the creeps. It belongs on a different version of him. Younger; not so many lines around the eyes. Not so many memories of what it’s like to be a monster. After Hell, putting it back on took him months to get used to. Now he feels that same strangeness, but multiplied by orders of magnitude. By years lived on the earth.

Dean tucks the amulet back under his shirt and pulls out his flashlight. In the light from the thin beam, he can see that the warehouse is stacked end to end with near-identical crates. Even if he’d known which one the key was in before, finding it now would be a hell of a job. 

He sighs, touches the amulet again, and gets walking. 

It’s way past midnight by the time he’s gotten all the way around the warehouse—stopping to clamber up on top of stacks of boxes, to dismantle them and then stack them up again, because who the fuck knows how close he’s gonna have to get to the thing before the amulet picks it up?

Nothing. It bobs against his chest, stubbornly room-temperature.

Dean groans. Stretches the kinks out of his back and glances around. The loading area nearest the waterfront is probably where the crates that came in this afternoon are. If he had to guess—and that’s the best shot he has right now—the key is going to be around there somewhere.

There’s a storage cupboard in the far corner. Locked, which means it might just contain something stealable. Like tools.

A couple minutes with a lock pick, a rummage through the storeroom until he finds a crowbar, and Dean’s onto Plan B. It isn’t exactly quiet enough to be ideal, but needs must, and all that crap. 

He pops the lid off of the first crate, and sees the gleam of something metallic. His heart leaps. 

He shines the flashlight into the crate.

Candlesticks.

Dean sighs and scrubs at his eyes. They make that shit here—knives and forks, household stuff. He’s heard the guys at the docks mention friends or brothers who work in the factories. What’s the bet every one of these crates holds some kind of silverware?

He pokes half-heartedly through the crate, but there’s nothing that looks like a key, and the amulet stays inert.

Yeah, this is gonna suck. But it’s got to be done—and hey, at least it gives him something to take his mind off of Benny and the whole confusing situation that’s going on there. Benny kissing him. Benny apologizing. Benny acting like he actually gives a crap about Dean and his life, for all that they’re on opposite teams and Dean’s had him cuffed in a shitty rented room for the whole three days they’ve known each other.

No. He isn’t thinking about it. He reaches for the next crate.

Hours tick by. Dean’s shoulders start to ache, and eventually he gets too tired to keep his damn brain under control, because when he stops to stretch and rub his sore eyes, he can’t stop himself seeing Benny’s face. 

No sign of the key.

Dean glances at his watch. It’s getting close to five. The docks will be coming alive soon, ready for the morning tide. He can’t stay in here. Even if nobody comes in, hunting through crates of silverware isn’t exactly something you can be stealthy about. Somebody’s gonna hear something. 

He gives one last, not-too-hopeful look around the warehouse, then replaces the lid on the last crate. He returns the crowbar to the storeroom and shuts the door. If you’re not inspecting it too closely, it just looks like maybe somebody forgot to lock it last night.

Dean slips out the side door, back up the alley and away from the waterfront. 

He passes the grocery store—still closed for the night—and the butcher where he buys Benny’s blood. Just for a second, he catches a glimpse of the interior of the latter through the door, pig carcasses slit down the middle and swinging from the ceiling.

Dean turns away, heads for his apartment building. He doesn’t have to work today—which could be a problem, if those crates are getting loaded onto a boat. But he’ll figure that out later. For now, he’s gonna get a couple hours’ shut-eye and then go check in with Warren.

He’s frowning to himself as he walks, thinking up excuses for hanging around the docks on his day off, so he almost doesn’t see the little figure hanging around the mouth of a side-street before it darts into the shadows.

Huh. Whoever it is, they’re way too young to be out at this time of night. Morning. Whatever.

Dean peers around the end of the side-street. He moves slowly, arms held out at his sides in his best non-threatening gesture.

“Hey,” he says. “Who’s there?”

No answer. Just a rustle and a sharp intake of breath that tells him the kid’s hiding around here somewhere.

Dean thinks back to when he was young, to the times when Dad stayed away longer than the money lasted, and he had to swipe stuff from grocery stores to make sure Sammy got dinner and lie to teachers to keep them from calling Social Services. Strange adults—hell, any adults—were the last thing he trusted.

He sighs and softens his voice. Stoops a little. "You're not in trouble, okay?" he says. "I'm not gonna hurt you. Just want to make sure you're safe."

He's mostly not lying. Except for the part where there's a nest of vampires hanging around this particular waterfront, and a kid out and about unprotected at this hour is in trouble pretty much by definition.

There's a pause, and a quiet sniffle from somewhere in the alley, and then a little figure emerges from behind a dumpster.

Dean blinks. He recognizes the kid.

It's the little brother—Faith's youngest kid. What was his name? Dean frowns.

"Hey," he says. “You’re Connie’s brother, right?” 

The kid eyes him warily, but after a moment, he nods. “My name’s Christopher,” he says.

“What are you doing out here by yourself, huh? Won't your mom and your sister be worried?”

Christopher shrugs, shuffles forward. "I had to see," he says.

Dean keeps as still as he can. Kid's like a startled rabbit, and Dean's pretty sure one wrong move is gonna be enough to make him bolt. "See what?" he asks. 

Christopher bites his lip, stays quiet.

"Or see who?" Dean goes on, then. Christopher's wide eyes dart left and right. Frightened. He glances up and down the alleyway, then comes closer.

"The man with shark teeth," he says. "Sometimes he watches us. Connie and me, and our mom."

Dean's heart sinks. "Shark teeth?" he says. "You're sure?"

Christopher nods, face solemn.

"Okay," Dean says, and if it's physically possible, the kid's eyes get even wider.

"You believe me?" he whispers.

"Yeah," Dean nods. "I believe you. And that's why you need to get back home. To your mom and your sister."

“But—”

“I’m gonna take care of—of shark teeth guy, okay? ‘S my job. You stay safe.” He chances a step closer, puts his hand on the Christopher’s shoulder and says what would’ve worked on him when he was a kid who’d seen too much scary crap for reassurances to be any use. “Your sister and your mom don’t know, right? They need somebody to look out for them. Can you do that?”

The kid nods vigorously and runs off. 

Dean watches him until he disappears into the bottom floor of an apartment building, just to be sure. Then he takes a look around.

Probably looks kinda shady himself, sneaking around alleys, but Faith’s a nice lady. Dean can’t leave her and her kids unprotected if one of Benny’s nestmates is hanging around looking for a snack. He checks out the nearby side-streets, but there’s nobody around. Whoever shark teeth guy is, he’s split.

No vampire not looking to win a Darwin Award would attack a family with little kids in broad daylight in the middle of a city. They’re safe for now. Dean takes one last look around, and makes for his apartment building.

It’s quiet when he opens the door. 

Too quiet, and Dean reaches for his gun just in case. His brain jumps straight to _worst-case scenario_ , and he finds himself re-running his earlier conversation with Benny in his head, searching it for clues that Benny was bullshitting him. He presses himself to the wall, braced for an attack.

It doesn’t come. The room is empty.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean stands in the empty room. He turns on the spot, slow and careful—like he might blink and find Benny just standing there, or, hell, hiding behind the furniture or something.

Nothing.

He closes the door behind him. Drops his keys on the table. Picks up the whiskey bottle and swallows the two inches or so left in the bottom of it. It burns on the way down, but does nothing to calm the racing of his pulse or the voice inside his head saying, _stupid, stupid, stupid, of course he’s gone._

The voice is right. Letting Benny get away just because he shares a face with the one guy Dean knows who never let him down. Because he acted a little bit interested, a little bit sorry. Jesus. How pathetic can you get?

Dean stares at the bottle in his hand for a heartbeat. Then he flings it across the room.

It shatters against the wall, and the silence it leaves behind is somehow bigger than before.

Dean closes his eyes and rubs a hand over them. The hot pulse of a headache is starting up behind them, and he aches all over from tiredness. Even if there was a chance he might find Benny just round the corner—which, no way in hell—the thought of heading back out in search of him makes Dean want to groan and bury his head in his hands.

He shrugs off his jacket and throws it onto the bed. The indentation Benny’s body made in the covers is still visible. Dean’s about to sink down onto the mattress himself when his eye catches on an absence.

The carton of blood he brought Benny last night is gone from the tabletop.

Dean gets to his feet, frowning. He checks the trashcan, but there’s nothing in there, either.

He shouldn’t get his hopes up. Okay, so Dean picked up some blood to go and Benny took it with him. Doesn’t mean he won’t be out looking for a human snack soon as the sun goes down.

Only why would he bother to take it, otherwise? Dean saw the nasty-ass congealed mess it turned into after being left overnight. Like packing a handful of pocket crumbs for a snack when you know there’s a steakhouse down the road.

Dean shakes his head. He can’t think about it. Benny’s gone. That proves he can’t be trusted. He isn’t the guy Dean knew, and Dean should’ve known better than to act like he was. That’s all. He sighs.

He should head out and look for Benny. Okay, so there’s no way he’s still in the neighborhood, but Dean should try anyway. Where the hell he’s gonna start, he doesn’t know. Knock on the neighbors’ doors and ask if any of them happened to be peering through the windows in the small hours of the morning? But he should try.

He’s going to. He truly is. He just needs a couple minutes to get himself together is all.

Dean sits on the edge of the bed. Lets his head drop into his hands. He hasn’t slept in an actual bed in days, and exhaustion is a weight inside his skull, black and heavy and hopeless.

No key. No Benny. No nothing.

His eyes fall closed of their own accord. Dean tries to fight it. Focus on the dawn light starting to seep through the drapes, on finding Benny.

He tries, but he’s already sinking.

 

 

\----

 

Dean wakes by inches, fuzzy-headed. He floats for a minute in that weird half-awake space where you’re not really sure which of the realities you’re seeing is your dream. Not a place Dean visits often. Years of living with things that go bump in the night mean that startling awake with a jolt of adrenaline is Dean’s normal. The only times he wakes up slowly are the days after a tough hunt, when the monster’s dead and he’s so fucking tired he could crawl into his own grave.

Right now, though, sleep clings onto him. A memory drags him back down into unconsciousness.

Purgatory. Not any specific night. Most of the nights were the same, and most of the days too, and more often than not they blur into one long streak of fighting and running, hiding and snatching hours of fitful sleep, searching and more fighting, rinse and repeat. Sometimes it wasn’t safe to stop and rest up, never mind however many knocks they’d taken that day or how close Dean was to dropping right there in the middle of the forest. But when they did find somewhere to hole up, Benny would insist on taking first watch. Dean would put up a token fight, and Benny would make some crack about not wanting his ticket home to drop dead, thanks, and that would be enough that Dean felt okay giving up and giving in to sleep.

Sometimes when he woke up, he’d find something uncharacteristically soft underneath him. Benny’s jacket, folded up under his head for a makeshift pillow. It smelled like him.

It smells like Benny now. Not like in Purgatory, because those memories are shot through with wet earth and fresh blood, but close enough that Dean blinks muzzily and it takes a moment for him to register where he is.

In bed, in his rented room, with the sounds of a day already well underway outside the window—and Benny long gone.

He curls up into a sitting position, disappointment like a stone in his gut.

Going after Benny now would be pointless. Trail’s cold. Dean tells himself to stop thinking about it. He’ll deal with that situation—and he tries hard not to think about how—once he’s gotten a lead on the key. First, he needs to go see Warren.

He feels gross, though, itchy and uncomfortable from sleeping fully-dressed, and he probably doesn’t exactly smell fresh as a daisy.

At least there’s one upside to Benny being gone. He can take a damn shower in peace.

The shared bathroom down the far end of the hall is deserted, since it’s late enough in the day everybody else has already headed out to work. It’s somewhere near the bottom end of the Gross Bathrooms Dean Has Seen-scale, with mold growing in the cracks between the tiles and a snarl of somebody’s—or possibly several somebodies’—hair clogging up the drain, but Dean actually doesn’t have the energy to bitch to himself about it. He strips without looking at the pale, raised mark on his forearm that used to be a pulse of angry red. Stuffs his clothes into his duffel to be washed later, and steps under the water.

Then he thanks his lucky stars that there’s nobody around, because the squeak he lets out when it dumps what feels like a bucketful of ice water over his head would be enough to earn him years of mockery from Sam. He sputters and squints through the cold water running down his face, leans forward shivering to fiddle with the faucet.

Jesus. The bunker is already built by now, so it isn’t like 1959 is any excuse for plumbing this shitty. They have the technology.

The water warms up after a minute, but Dean’s still stuck on the thought of the bunker. His own room with his own bed and his vinyls and his photographs, and decent water pressure, and Sam down the hall and Cas a phone call away, and no walking reminders of dead friends confusing the hell out of him. He’s only been here a couple days, but home feels a hell of a lot further away than that. Technically it is.

Dean grits his teeth. No use in thinking about it. He’s stuck here until he either finds the damn key or Cas can’t wait any longer to zap him back, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

He closes his eyes and sluices the grime off of his skin, and does his best to ignore the ache in his chest.

 

 

\----

 

It’s late morning when Dean taps at the door to Warren’s store. The sign is turned to ‘Closed’ and the place looks deserted. No surprise the place is rotting under an inch of dust if Warren doesn’t even open up before noon.

No reply. Dean knocks again, harder. Waits.

After a couple minutes—and a couple weird looks from passers-by—he sighs and tries the door, wondering if there’s any chance at all he can pick the lock in the middle of the street in broad daylight without being hauled off by the cops.

The doorknob turns easily in his hand.

Dean frowns, hand going to his gun. He cracks the door open and peers in, blinking as his eyes adjust to the dusty dark after the daylight outside.

The store itself is empty. No sign of struggle, no smell of blood—but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Crap. He should’ve checked in with Warren yesterday.

He opens the door behind the counter and inches down the hallway toward the back room that holds Warren’s library. It’s silent, darker here, but then Dean rounds the corner and sees that there’s a light on. The door is open just a crack, and he can hear a faint noise, a _scritch-scritch_ like rats in the walls.

Gun cocked, he pushes the door open.

Warren looks up from the desk, blinking owlishly as his gaze lands on Dean. Then he smiles.

“Back already?” he says, and Dean registers that yeah, that’s the same mug standing on the desk he was drinking out of when Dean left. Dean’s own coffee mug is still sitting on the other side of the table, and he thinks Warren might actually still be wearing the same clothes. There’s a seriously funky smell in the air, and Dean suspects it isn’t just the moldy old books.

He makes a face. “Dude,” he says. “Have you even moved out of this chair since I left?”

Warren frowns, like he’s actually having to think about the answer. Then he turns back to his book. “I _have_ found something,” he says.

Dean feels his eyes go wide. He sets his gun down on the table and pulls up a chair. “Yeah?”

“The Key of Annwn is mentioned in a couple of medieval Celtic texts,” Warren says. He’s got this intent, distracted look in his eyes—kind of like Sam gets when he’s found a lead, only apparently Warren doesn’t have Sam’s experience at explaining things to people who don’t give a shit about medieval Celtic whatevers.

Dean sighs. “So, what’s it say?”

“The key was given to Pwyll of Dyfed, sometime in the Dark Ages. He traded places with the king of the underworld for a year and a day—a fairly standard deal—and when that time was up, the king gave him the key to the kingdom as a reward for his help.” Warren frowns at the page. “It says that Pwyll passed the key on to his descendants. _One in each generation will be its keeper_.”

“Hold up.” Dean frowns. “King of the underworld. As in, the King of Hell? Because anything that comes from there—”

“No.” Warren cuts him off without lifting his eyes from the page. “Annwn. The Otherworld of the Celts—it’s from a different order of mythology altogether. There are various worlds that exist in parallel to this one—not just Heaven and Hell.”

Like Oz. Or Purgatory.

Warren looks like he might be about to get into the details, so Dean cuts in before he can click into lecture mode. “Got it. So, what, we gotta find somebody who’s descended from this Prince Pu—”

“Pwyll.”

“—whatever-his-name-is, and just hope they never pawned the family silver?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t exactly have county records offices back then.”

Warren gives him a small smile. “You guess right.”

“Well, that’s just awesome.”

“There is one other thing. It concerns actually using the key.” Warren turns a sharp look on Dean. “That’s what you’re gonna do, isn’t it?”

Dean looks back at him hard. “You’d seen some of the crap I have, you wouldn’t think twice about it either.”

Warren inclines his head. “Not questioning your judgment.”

He reaches for another book. It’s old, bound in dark green leather, something embossed on the cover that looks like a pig when Dean squints at it a little. Warren opens it, scans the page.

“The key can open the doors between realms—and also close them permanently. It seems the king of Annwn trusted Pwyll to be his kingdom’s keeper on the earthly side.”

Dean nods impatiently. “Yeah, okay. Get to the important part.”

Warren frowns, but he goes on. “The ritual for using the key isn’t very clear. I haven’t found any explanation of how we’re supposed to find the key’s essence.”

“Oh yeah, we gotta—what, extract its mojo? Sounds like a pain in the ass.” Though actually, Cas could probably help out with that. How different can it be from stealing grace?

“I guess so,” Warren says. “There isn’t much help in here.” He closes the book.

Well, Dean’s isn’t the brain trust here. There are geeks back in the future who can deal with that. Dean’s gonna have enough work to do figuring out who the hell the keeper of this key is—not to mention whether they even know what it is, and how he’s gonna persuade them to sell up. Just stealing the thing straight up would be simpler, and if he was any closer to knowing what it looked like, he’d be all for a little breaking and entering and a quick zap back to 2015. As things are—yeah, he’s stuck with the ‘sweet-talking a stranger’ option. Fucking A.

It’s Warren who jolts him out of his thoughts. He pushes the book away from him with a short, decisive movement, and sits up straighter in his chair.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, “but without the key itself, I don’t think I can help you much more.”

Dean shrugs. “Don’t sweat it,” he says, but Warren’s still looking at him.

“That brings me to the other little problem we have around here at the moment,” he says, and Dean’s heart sinks.

“The vamps,” he says.

Warren nods. “They’ve been hanging around here over a week, and only the one kill. My guess is, they’re waiting for a boat to set out from harbor, and they’ll attack out on the water.”

You have to give it to him: Warren’s good. Dean swallows. “Yeah,” he gets out. “That’d be my guess, too.”

“It’s a big nest,” Warren says, then. “More than a two-man job—and honestly, I’m not a man of action unless I have to be.” He gestures around at his books. “I’m going to call some guys. Take a look at the boats scheduled to leave port in the next few days, try to figure out their target. Hopefully we can take them out before anybody gets hurt. You in?”

“Yeah,” Dean gets out. “I’m in.” He’s just gonna have to hope Benny gets away from the nest and finds Andrea before Warren and his pals make their move.

Crap. Benny.

He knows what Warren’s next question is gonna be before he asks it. “Of course,” he says, “it would help if we could get some info out of that vamp you got chained up at your place. Where they’re going to attack. He should be in better shape by now. Reckon he’ll give us anything?”

Dean plasters on a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

 

\----

 

Warren sat up for three days straight researching the key. The dude clearly has an obsessive streak a mile wide, and now he’s turned his attention to the vamps, that doesn’t bode well for Benny. Or for Dean, once Warren and however many hunter buddies he has on call figure out he let Benny get away.

There’s jack Dean can do about that right now, though, so he makes a start on hunting down the key’s owner and tries not to think about it.

Not that his luck is looking any better on that score. Asking around down at the docks gets him a few tidbits of info—including the fact that the cargo he spent last night rooting around in belongs to some German dude who definitely doesn’t sound like he’s descended from a Celtic prince—but none of them are useful. By the time things start to wind down for the evening, Dean’s questions have started getting him funny looks. Including from Walt and the guys he works with, which he can’t really blame them for. If he worked in a shitty, backbreaking job like this full-time, and one of his co-workers couldn’t stay away on his day off? Yeah, he’d think the guy was a weirdo, too.

His total lack of progress is depressing enough—plus, there’s the fact that when he’s not thinking about the stupid key, he’s thinking about Benny. Running their conversations through his head on a loop, looking for the clues he missed. Or wondering when he became such a fucking idiot, because the whole _still a bloodsucking killer_ thing was a pretty fucking huge clue. He let himself get caught out because he couldn’t separate the Benny in front of him from the one in his memories, and there’s nobody to blame for that but himself.

Dean’s still thinking about it when he figures out he isn’t getting anywhere today and leaves. He’s antsy in the way that being tired as hell with nothing to show for it always leaves him.

Later, he’s gonna blame that for the fact he doesn’t realize he’s being tailed until he’s halfway back to the apartment building.

One guy. Average height, bit of a beard. Dressed like he works on the boats or the harbor.

Could just be one of the guys from the docks wondering what the weirdo is up to, but Dean’s never been that much of an optimist. He changes direction, heads away from the apartment building; takes a sharp left and ducks into a side-street.

The guy is unfamiliar. He isn’t one of the people Dean spoke to today, and Dean hasn’t seen him around at work, either.

Benny’s nest, though. Dean wouldn’t know most of them if he saw them. And if Benny got back to them last night, they know there’s a hunter around.

Something twists up tight inside of him at the thought of Benny having been the one to send this bloodsucker after him. It _hurts_ , and it feels like losing something, like a hole punched right through the middle of him.

Just for a second, all Dean can think is, _It isn’t fucking fair._

A second is all it takes. There’s a sound to his right. Dean starts, glances around a corner—and suddenly he’s in a blind alley, pinned to the wall with a hand around his throat and a mouthful of lamprey teeth bearing down on his carotid.

Dean headbutts the vamp right in the mouth. It throws him off for a half-second and Dean wrenches out of his grip, grabs for the knife hidden inside his jacket.

He isn’t quick enough. The vamp grabs his arm and holds it fast. Dean can hear his heartbeat in his ears, feel the vamp’s fingers digging into his skin. It’s too strong for him.

Except—

Not so long ago, the Mark would have been throbbing like a brand on his arm by now, the need for the fight stronger in him than self-preservation. He could’ve taken a single bloodsucker out without breaking a sweat.

Maybe he could now, if he used the Mark. All of its power is still there, just dormant, waiting for him to use it. He hasn’t touched it since they managed to bind it, but then he hasn’t needed to. And this sure as hell counts as necessity.

If he just knew for sure that he could control it. That it wouldn’t swallow him up like before.

“Old man says ‘hi’,” the vamp says, and ducks his head toward Dean’s neck. Dean feels his teeth catch there, the sharp prickle of pain as they pierce the skin.

He squeezes his eyes shut. Reaches into the back of his mind, into the depths of himself. There it is, damped down like an ember, but ready to flare up at his touch.

Dean breathes in hard, grits his teeth. He can control this, he tells himself. He has to. It isn’t like he has a choice.

That’s when something barrels into the alleyway and hits the vamp like a Mack truck.

The vamp flies sideways and away from Dean, hitting the ground with an audible crack. Groans. Then he looks up at the burly figure pinning him to the ground.

“Benny?” Dean can hear the confusion in his voice.

“And there I was thinking you’d forgotten me.” Benny looks up, still holding the other vamp down by his shoulders, and raises an eyebrow at Dean. “You just gonna stand there, brother?”

It takes Dean a second to catch his meaning. Just a second; then he pulls out his knife.  
Benny takes one look at it and shakes his head. “Now,” he says. “We ain’t got much time here, and that pigsticker’s ain’t exactly gonna do the job clean.” He jerks his head to one side, eyes down, and Dean follows his gaze.

There’s a machete hanging from Benny’s belt. Dean spends a nanosecond wondering where the hell Benny found it if he hasn’t been back with the nest, then realizes it’s his.

“Dude,” he says. “Not cool.”

Benny shrugs. “I’m giving it back to you, ain’t I?”

The other vamp stiffens as Dean walks toward them, looks up at Benny in wide-eyed disbelief.

“You can’t,” he says. “You won’t get away with this. When the old man finds out—”

Benny smiles down at him. “Well,” he says. “Ain’t that it? Just gonna have to take special care that he doesn’t, I guess.”

Dean crouches at his side. Unhooks the machete from Benny’s belt. He can’t help brushing against Benny’s side as he does so. It feels solid. Real. Like the same old trusty Benny who had his back in every fight in Purgatory and then watched over him while he slept.

He pushes the thought away. He has more important crap to worry about right now.

“Wait—” says the other vamp, and then Dean takes his head off with one clean swing.

It hits the floor and rolls. Blood sprays from the neck in a vivid arc, turning Benny’s shirt red and spattering his face. Dean steps back out the way, but he still gets blood on his boots.

Benny climbs to his feet, wiping the blood from his eyes.

“’Bout time,” he says to Dean. “Thought I was gonna have to—”

He stops, his eyes fastened on Dean. On the wound at his neck.

A beat, and then Benny turns away. There’s tension in the set of his shoulders. Dean watches him carefully from a couple paces back.

Benny’s facing away from him. Struggling. His guard is down. Dean could take him out right now.

Benny doesn’t know him—not the way he did in Dean’s time—and Benny’s still fighting the urge to drink his blood.

That’s enough to make Dean’s decision for him, if it was ever a decision at all. He lets the hand holding the machete drop to his side and fumbles with the collar of his shirt until the bite mark is mostly covered.

“Benny,” he says, cautiously. “What the hell was that?”

Benny takes a breath, then another. They’re harsh. He shudders and holds still for a long moment before he turns around.

His fangs have retracted, but he still holds himself back, out of easy reach of Dean. “Been tailing you since this morning,” he says. “Probably earlier. Far as they’re concerned, the only good hunter’s a dead hunter.”

 _They_. Not _we_.

“And I—I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Because you know I know things,” Dean realizes. “About you.”

Benny looks at him, steady and measuring. “Sure,” he says. “There’s that.”

Dean narrows his eyes.

“Then there’s the fact you saved my bacon with that antidote, ‘stead of killing me. Still ain’t sure why, but—I figure I owe you.”

There are things Benny isn’t saying. Dean’s sure of that.

But they can’t have this conversation now, and they certainly can’t have it here. They’ve got a body to hide. And then—well, if Dean’s had vamps on his ass all day, chances are they know where he’s staying. He and Benny are gonna have to find somewhere new to hide themselves.

 

 

\----

 

The waterfront is quiet after dark. Just the lapping of waves around the sides of the small boat, and the occasional low-voiced instruction from Benny.

Dean’s been on boats before, and he’s never gotten seasick. This thing isn’t much more than a dinghy, though, and the darkness makes it hard to tell where the water ends and the sky begins. Staring out at it with the boat rocking under him, he feels a little roll of nausea in his gut from the motion and the disorientation. Plus his head is aching, and the job just got twice as complicated now he has a nest of vampires on his ass.

“We should be good here,” Benny says, letting his oar go. Dean blinks and swallows dryly.

“Right,” he says. The vamp’s body lies in bottom of the boat, wrapped in a stolen tarp from the harbor and weighted down with rocks. The head is separate, a not-at-all-suspicious parcel of its own.

“Everything okay?”

Benny’s watching him with sharp eyes, and Dean must look worse than he thought, because he’s pretty sure that’s concern in Benny’s voice.

It sounds genuine. Dean still has whiplash from the whole heel-face carousel or whatever it is Benny has going on right now, and he doesn’t know if he can trust it. He knows that he wants to, and he doesn’t know if he can trust _that_.

Still, he’s on a boat in the middle of the water in the middle of the night, half a century away from Sam and Cas and the bunker, and no closer to finding the key than he was when he got here. Benny’s all he’s got right now.

He swallows again, grateful that he didn’t have time to eat before the vamp jumped him in the alley. “I’m fine,” he says, and reaches for his end of the body.

There’s barely a splash as they dump the vamp. Just the pale shape of the tarp-wrapped body fading slowly into the black. They watch it vanish.

“So,” Dean says, after a moment. “What now?”

Benny shrugs. “Might have time to swing back by your place so you can grab your things, but we can’t go back there. Too risky. Lucky for us, I know a couple places.”

Dean frowns. “Hate to be Captain Obvious here, but if you know a couple places, don’t your bloodsucker buddies know ‘em, too?”

Benny tugs at the brim of his cap. It’s hard to see his face out here in the dark, but Dean thinks he catches a faint smile.

“Well,” Benny says. “That’s just the thing.”

 

 

\----

 

“ _This_ is your idea of a hideout?”

Benny gives this little half-shrug, and from the way he’s watching Dean, Dean can’t help but feel he’s being laughed at a little. “You said the seasickness was a one-off.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think—” Dean breaks off in the face of Benny’s smirk and sighs. “I didn’t think. Obviously.”

He grips his duffel a little more tightly and takes a step out onto the deck. It moves under Dean’s weight, but he steadies himself with a hand on the side of the boat.

According to Benny, the boat is moored at the marina for the season, and the rich asshole who owns it isn’t even in the country right now. No plans to head out mean it isn’t worth a look from his nestmates. Dean has to admit that it makes a kind of sense, hiding in plain sight like this. The vamps won’t be looking for their runaway buddy among their victims.

Still, doesn’t mean he has to be happy about spending the night on the water. Dean lives in an underground bunker. He likes earth. Blacktop. Solid ground.

Benny, though. Benny moves like he’s in his element, with a grace and sureness Dean’s only ever seen in him when they were fighting. He’s perfectly at ease, but Dean can’t put a name to it until Benny jimmies the lock of the cabin and sets his hand on the wheel in a gesture that makes Dean miss his baby with a sudden, needling ache. Benny looks like he’s at home.

Dean ducks into the cabin and sets his duffel down on the floor. There’s a set of steps leading below deck, and he maneuvers himself down them to take a look. Which is a hell of a task, because the accommodation sure wasn’t designed with anybody bigger than Frodo Baggins in mind.

There’s a narrow bunk below deck, plus a couch thing that looks like it might serve as another bed. Not much else.

Except for the booze cabinet. Jackpot. Dean opens it up and helps himself to a generous three fingers of whiskey, because hey, something’s finally gone right in this shitty day, and he’s damn well taking advantage of it.

He knocks it back and refills the tumbler. Hesitates for a second before grabbing another, pouring a generous slug into it, and climbing back up the stairs.

He manages not to spill either of them, which is a minor miracle. Benny raises an eyebrow when Dean holds one out to him.

“We on drinking terms now?”

Dean snorts. “Depends what you mean by that,” he says, keeping his voice light, but there’s a twist of apprehension in his stomach.

Despite himself, despite all the sensible voices in his head, he wants it to be true. He wants Benny not to hold the whole dead-man’s-blood-and-kidnapping thing against him. Wants there to be something to it—to Benny saving his ass and having secrets from his nest. Something good. He wants to be able to do what his gut told him to that first day in Purgatory, and _trust_ Benny.

Benny actually smiles at him. “I ain’t gonna tap the keg while you’re sleeping, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says. Then his expression turns serious, and he looks Dean up and down. “Speaking of—you look like you need it, brother.”

“Maybe.” Dean looks down into his drink. “But not yet. I need answers more’n I need to crash.”

Benny takes a sip of whiskey. Touches the rim of the glass with his thumb, then looks up and meets Dean’s eyes. “Answers?”

“What’s all this about, man? Coming back for me, helping me take out your pal back there—and now I find out you’ve been keeping this bolthole from the rest of the gang? What’s going on?”

Benny looks at him, calm and steady. “Well,” he says, slowly. “We’re one-for-one on life-saving. How about we make it an even trade with the stories, too? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” He cocks his head. “Including how you know me.”

_We’re gonna meet fifty years from now, in another world. We’re gonna spend a year slicing and dicing black goo monsters while we look for an angel and a magic door. Then I’m gonna be the world’s crappiest friend for a few months, and then I’m gonna ask you to lay your life down to rescue my brother—who isn’t exactly your number one fan, and that’s an understatement. And you, you stupid sonofabitch, you’re gonna do it._

Sounds crazy. Dean’ll be lucky if Benny doesn’t just drop his ass overboard right here.

He shrugs. “Sure,” he says.

Benny tips his glass in a toast, and Dean honestly can’t tell if it’s supposed to be ironic or not. “You first, brother,” he says.

Dean should lie. Spin him some bullshit about having heard of the nest through the hunters’ network and tracked them here; invent a relative who was on one of the boats they sank. It sounds plausible. Anybody else, and Dean could make them believe it.

Benny’s always seen through his crap, but he should try anyway.

He knows he won’t. He sets down his drink and looks Benny in the eye.

“You’re right,” he says. “I do know you. Or more like, I will know you. Because I’m not from around here. I’m not even from around now.”

 

 

\----

 

Benny takes it freakishly well, all things considered. He just nods, when Dean’s done with the whole sorry tale, and says, “Well, that explains a whole lot.”

Dean stares at him. “You believe me?”

“I thought vampires were just a story, once upon a time.” Benny makes an expansive gesture. “And they’ve been saying men are gonna learn to travel through time one day since I was a boy. Why not believe it?”

“Okay,” Dean says. “It ain’t some Doctor Who thing.” He checks himself at Benny’s confused look. “Or some H. G. Wells thing, or whatever. It’s more complicated than that.”

Benny raises his glass. “Ain’t that always the way?”

“Okay. Your turn. What’s going on with you? Hiding from your nest, helping me out? You got no reason to do any of that.”

“Maybe not.” Benny’s smiling, but there’s an edge of sadness to it. “Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I ain’t what a vampire’s s’posed to be.” He lifts his drink halfway to his mouth, then stops and just looks at it. Dean watches him; how the glass distorts his face. “Used to be everything the old man wanted. Didn’t question him. Spent long enough at sea with him and the others I didn’t think to. Hadn’t spoken to a living person in years. Hadn’t even looked at one longer’n it took to rip their throat out.”

“So? What happened?”

“Old man sent me on an errand. I was onshore a few weeks, down in Florida. And I started to notice things. Notice people.” Benny goes quiet for a moment. “This old lady, owned a diner on the waterfront. Tried to give me free coffee and pie any chance she got. Guess she saw me on my own a lot and felt sorry for me. This guy with his daughter, walking along the front every evening, just as the sun was setting, watching the boats with her until it got too dark to see anymore. This old sailor who told me stories about all the places he’d been. I figure he didn’t have nobody else to talk to, so when I showed up asking questions, he just jumped at the chance.”

Dean looks at him. “And what, you figured out they weren’t just happy meals on legs? That was all it took?”

“You put it like that, I guess it don’t sound too convincing.” Benny finally downs the last inch of whiskey in his glass. “But it is what it is. Guess I just lost touch with it for a while, out on the water all those years.”

“You still went back to the nest,” Dean points out. “Why not just cut and run?”

“Only family I got.” Benny looks down. “Guess I figured I could get around it somehow. Live off of animal blood and hope they wouldn’t notice.”

Animal blood. “It was you,” Dean realizes. “Buying blood from the butcher. He said somebody had been coming in, and I figured it had to be a vamp, maybe one of the other from your nest. But it was you.”

Benny nods, silently.

Dean shouldn’t believe it. It’s too damn good to be true. Benny told him, back in the future, that it was Andrea who made him change his mind about humanity. Never mentioned anything about already being halfway there when they met.

But then, everybody does that. Wraps things up into neat little bundles for the telling, so they don’t have to explain the messy parts. Like running with a bunch of murderous bloodsuckers even knowing what they were doing was wrong. Dean ignores the messy parts of what he does all the damn time. Only thing that keeps him sane.

He can’t help it; he feels a weight lift from his chest.

“You didn’t tell me,” he says, at last. It’s only half an accusation.

“You’re a hunter. One of your kind, hearing that story from one of mine? Figure it’d be hard to believe.”

“Guess so,” Dean says. Then he looks up, looks Benny in the eyes. There’s hope there—and something else, something soft that he can’t put a name to. “But I do. Believe you, I mean.”

Benny nods. “Because you know me.” He hesitates, worries at his lower lip. “And in your time—I ain’t a monster?”

“Not the kind that deserves killing.”

That seems to be enough, because Benny goes quiet, his expression very solemn.

After a moment, though, he looks up. “One other thing. I gotta ask.”

“Shoot.”

“Me and you.” All of a sudden, Benny isn’t making eye contact. “Were we—”

“What?” Dean says, because even though he knows what Benny’s asking, it still takes him by surprise. And then, “No! No, we weren’t.”

 _Because we never had time_ , he doesn’t say. _Because we were kinda busy fighting for our lives. Because my brother and every other hunter I knew thought you needed to be put down, and I knew different and I still gave you up._

_Because I didn’t deserve you._

 

_ _

 

Benny doesn’t argue. He inclines his head in the direction of the steps. “They got a medical kit downstairs,” he says. “You should clean up.” He touches his fingers to his neck, the same spot where Dean got bit earlier.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m beat.”

Dean gets to his feet, feeling his weariness in his bones now. Heads below deck, dabs at the wound on his neck with antiseptic and cotton buds, then strips out of his jeans and jacket and climbs into the narrow bed.

It’s hard and the blankets are thin, designed for warmer weather. Dean shivers a little, and he can’t get comfortable no matter how many times he turns over, but he’s bone-tired enough that eventually, sleep takes him anyway.

He wakes up once—in the early hours of the morning, at a guess—to the weight of something spread out on top of him. He blinks and screws up his eyes, and sees that it’s Benny’s coat.

He should probably be creeped out at the thought of Benny sneaking in to check on him while he was out, but before he can muster up any annoyance, he’s sliding back into sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Benny’s still in the cabin when Dean emerges, aching like he switched bodies with an eighty-year-old sometime during the night and cursing the absence of a coffee maker anywhere on board this crate. He braces himself for daylight and pokes his head out the hatch, to find Benny hunkered down under the sight-line of passers-by, the brim of his cap pulled down low over his face. One hand hangs limply at his side, and as Dean inches closer, he makes a quiet kind of snuffling noise that’s—yeah, that’s definitely a snore.

Despite himself, Dean smirks. If he’d ever caught Benny like this in Purgatory, it would’ve been mockery ammunition for days.

Except vampires don’t need to sleep anywhere near as much as humans, and Benny’s out cold. Has been for a while, judging by the way he doesn’t even stir when Dean snaps his fingers in front of Benny’s face.

Vampires don’t need to sleep like this unless they’re sick. Unless they’ve been poisoned with dead man’s blood and gone too long without a dose of the antidote, maybe. Benny was getting better. He _should’ve_ been getting better. Dean’s never known dead man’s blood knock a vamp for six quite this bad before. But then he’s never dealt with one who’s been voluntarily avoiding human blood for Christ-knows-how-long. Animal blood from the butcher will get a vampire by, but it isn’t the same, and maybe that makes a difference when they’re sick. Plus, Benny’s only drunk two cartons of it in three days—nowhere near what a vamp would normally take from a kill. He probably didn’t have anywhere to store it while he was trying to hide what he was doing from the nest, either. He must’ve been living off whatever he could buy from the butcher and get down his neck before heading back out to the boats.

How long _has_ Benny been half-starved for?

Dean shuffles closer on his knees, and while he’s being careful to keep his head below the windows, he catches Benny’s abandoned whiskey glass with his foot and knocks it over, filmy dregs forming a little puddle on the floor. Benny doesn’t react.

He doesn’t react when Dean pokes him in the arm, either, or when he lifts the brim of Benny’s cap and lets the sun stream into his face.

Dean curses, scrambles back down below deck and grabs his duffel. He wriggles back up through the hatch, hauling it after him, kneels at Benny’s side and shakes him by the shoulder.

“Hey,” he says. Benny doesn’t respond. “Hey,” he repeats, louder. He pulls off Benny’s cap, slaps lightly at his cheek. “Benny, man, c’mon. You gotta come back to me. You don’t get to drag me outta my nice cozy apartment onto this crate and then bail, you got it?”

Benny blinks, slowly. Once. Twice. 

“Dean?” He sounds faintly surprised. “You’re still here.”

“Course I’m still here, you see a Delorean anywhere?” 

Benny gives him a mystified look, and Dean shakes his head. 

“Never mind. Just making sure you’re still here too. Gimme your arm.”

Benny does as he’s told, holding still while Dean mixes up the antidote and injects him with it, not making a sound when the needle pierces his skin. He just sits there for a couple minutes after the shot, eyes shut tight like he’s fighting a headache, but when he opens them they focus in clearly on Dean’s face and the confusion recedes from his expression. 

Dean sits back on his heels and allows himself a sigh of relief. “Better?”

“Much. Appreciate it, brother,” Benny says. Then frowns as his stomach gurgles.

Dean can’t help a laugh. “You and me both, man,” he says.

He’s smiling, but they have a problem. Benny’s weak, and Dean—well, he may not be in danger of starvation just yet, but he’s been subsisting on coffee and whiskey and not much else for the last couple days. When the boat dips under him, he actually starts to feel a little lightheaded. 

They have a whole lot of vamp-dodging and magical-artefact-hunting still to do. They need to be in better shape than this before they head out.

Dean raises himself up on his knees, risking a cautious glance over the side of the boat. 

The marina’s quiet—must be a lull between tides, he guesses. Then he catches a movement near the water’s edge. There’s somebody there. Dean shuffles closer to the window to take a look. 

It’s a kid—same age as Connie, maybe. He sits with his legs dangling over the side of the harbor, a position that looks perilous enough Dean has to fight the urge to jump out of the boat and bodily drag him away from the water’s edge. The kid doesn’t seem bothered, though, just sits there swinging his feet and paging idly through a tattered comic book.

He looks bored as hell. Like he might jump at the chance of something to do. 

Could be useful.

Dean gives Benny a _keep quiet_ signal and takes a little time to look around the marina before he risks standing up and climbing out of the cabin. There isn’t much cover here, away from the alleys and warehouses of the docks. Dean has a clear view of the marina, and he’s 99% sure there’s nobody watching them right now.

The kid’s eyes widen when Dean climbs out of the boat. He scrambles to his feet. “Sorry, Mister,” he says. “I didn’t know anybody was here.”

He looks like he’s about to bolt, and Dean holds up a placating hand. “Hey,” he says. “Kiddo. I ain’t gonna yell at you. You can sit where you like.”

The kid blinks at him in surprise, but doesn’t run off, which Dean counts as a win.

“What you doing here anyway?” he asks.

The kid shrugs. “Waiting for my dad.”

“Working, huh?” The kid nods. Well, Dean knows how that is. Then he frowns. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks, then hears his teenage self groaning at him somewhere in the back of his mind.

The kid rolls his eyes. “It’s _Saturday_.” Then he looks down, scuffing his shoes on the ground. “It’s Saturday and I have to wait around here all day, and Connie and Chris ain’t even here.”

Connie and Chris. Huh.

“Yeah, that sucks,” Dean agrees. He reaches into his jacket pocket. The stack of greenbacks he brought with him has dwindled some, but he has enough to see himself and Benny through the next few days. It’s lucky the Men of Letters weren’t short of cash. “Listen, I need a couple errands, but I have to stay around here right now. You want to earn a few bucks?”

The kid eyes him suspiciously—and he doesn’t look any less weirded out when Dean explains the part about buying a carton of animal blood from the butcher shop. 

Dean can’t exactly blame him. If some random dude had tried to send him on a blood-buying errand when he was ten years old, he’s pretty sure he would’ve called Dad and broken out the holy water, before you could say Count Duckula. 

The rustle of dollars, though—that’s enough to make the kid think twice. After a moment’s thought he shuffles closer, cocking his head to one side. 

“Sure,” he says. “I can do that.” He frowns. “Just don’t tell my dad, okay? I’m not supposed to go into town on my own.”

Dean nods. “You don’t tell anybody we’re here, and you got yourself a deal.” Then he pauses. “Unless you see your friend Chris. Ask him something for me if you do, okay?”

“O… kay?”

“Ask him if he’s seen shark teeth guy again.”

The kid looks at Dean like he’s started speaking Russian. Then he shrugs and says, “Sure.”

A moment later, he’s haring off with five dollar bills clutched in his grubby fingers, and the promise of more if he actually shows with the goods.

Dean climbs back into the boat and sinks down onto the floor opposite Benny, stretching his legs out in front of him. He can’t sit completely upright without the top of head being visible through the windows, has to hunch over like he’s sitting in church or something. This is gonna get old real fast.

Benny looks over at him. “You gonna tell me what that was about?” he asks. “‘Shark teeth man?’” 

“Probably nothing.” Dean sighs. “There’s this woman. Faith. She’s booked on a passenger ship with her kids. Two of ‘em. They’re good kids. But I caught the youngest one sneaking out early a couple days ago. Said he was looking for the shark teeth man.” He shrugs. “I figure he saw one of your bloodsucker pals. Thought he might’ve noticed if there were any more of them hanging around.”

“Seems fair.”

“Long shot, I know. But hey, at least we’re getting lunch.”

“Yeah,” says Benny. And then: “’S good of you. Keepin’ me fed. But it ain’t your problem. You don’t gotta worry about that.”

“Hey,” Dean says. “Nobody else is gonna watch our backs, right?”

Benny gives him a small smile, and they lapse into silence. 

It feels familiar. In Purgatory, they could hide out for hours without needing to exchange more than a couple words. It wasn’t awkward; wasn’t any different from being out on the road with just his baby and Sam asleep in the shotgun seat for company. Comfortable—or anyway, as comfortable as anything can be when everything in a ten-mile radius thinks you’re breakfast.

This is like that. 

There are vamps chasing them; the mission’s going nowhere; Dean might have screwed with time and causality or some shit just by being here—he doesn’t really know; and he doesn’t even have a room of his own to sleep in anymore. But for the first time since he got here, he feels a flicker of contentment.

 

\----

 

It’s getting late. The marina’s quiet, sun sinking below the horizon in a long burn of orange. Dean looks out the window, eyes the darkening sky.

“You know,” he says, eventually. “I still got a job to do here.”

Benny nods. “Finding this key of yours. Gonna be mighty difficult in broad daylight.”

“Yeah.” Dean sighs and crumples up his sandwich bag. At least the kid came through—with lunch, and the news that Christopher hadn’t seen ‘shark teeth guy’ again since Dean ran into him. Might mean the nest has given up and sailed away, but more likely, it means they’ve got every available man out looking for Dean and Benny. Fucking awesome. He shakes his head. “I gotta find it, Benny. I gotta try.”

“I figured.” Benny looks up at him, his gaze steady. “I could come with.”

“You don’t gotta do that, Benny. You ain’t exactly on top of your game, you know. You already saved my ass once. The key’s my job. Don’t need to put yourself in the line of fire.”

“I’m gonna end up there sooner or later anyhow,” Benny points out. “Can’t hide out here forever.”

He’s got a point. If the nest find out he’s alive, they’re gonna have questions, and from what Dean saw his first night here, he’s pretty sure they don’t do Good Cop.

“Okay,” he says. “But no heroics. I understand you wanting to take those assholes out, I really do. But I got a job to do here.”

One corner of Benny’s mouth twitches up in a smile. “Sure thing, chief.”

“Good.” Dean gets to his feet—less risky, now that daylight’s on its way out—and chances a look outside. The marina’s quiet, the rich owners of the yachts probably headed into town for dinner and booze. Lucky bastards. Dean grabs the brown sandwich bag his own lunch came in a few hours ago, crumples it in his fist and draws back his arm.

Benny’s hand on his wrist stops him. His grip is viselike. He’s getting his strength back. Part of Dean’s brain registers that that has to be a good thing. They’re going out looking for the key tonight, he needs Benny recovered. But another part is reminded of how he felt that other night, when Benny kissed him, looked at him with those hungry eyes. It’s that part that speeds up his pulse as he spins to face Benny, makes his breath catch in his throat.

If Benny notices, he doesn’t say so. He just raises an eyebrow and says, “Hope you weren’t thinkin’ of throwing your trash overboard, brother.”

There’s a note of sternness in his voice, under the humorous tone, and it makes Dean flush. “So what if I was?”

“You wouldn’t like it if I tossed my trash out in your front room, would you?” Benny’s voice is mild, but his grip is still like steel. 

Dean’s hit with a memory. Benny raising an eyebrow in amusement when Dean scolded him for the state of his truck, but still clearing out the mess and taking it to the car wash before he got on the road. Dean hadn’t understood how he could deal with living out of it in that kind of a mess, and he’d said as much, and Benny had cast an eye toward the Impala and nodded. _I get it_ , he’d said. _‘S home for you_.

Dean gets it, then. The other reason that Benny didn’t run like hell the moment he realized what he and his nest were doing was fucked up. The reason he had to wait for Andrea to get out—for someone to sail away with.

He never talked about the sea in Purgatory. But then, he never talked about his family, either. Dean didn’t know he even had any until he met Elizabeth. When he did, he figured that the melancholy, the longing you could sometimes sense under Benny’s easy manner, was for them. 

Maybe some of it was for this, too. His home.

“Never thought of it like that,” Dean says, by way of apology. 

Benny lets him go, and he shoves the balled-up sandwich bag into his pocket. They stand there for a moment, before the window.

“You miss it,” he adds, after a minute. “I’m sorry, man.”

Benny smiles at him faintly, and turns to look out at the sea. They wait for dark.

 

\----

 

Dean lets Benny take the lead when they head out. He remembers how they used to work in Purgatory; how Benny would sometimes just hold up a hand and go still, and how that invariably meant there was something nasty—or something potentially useful—lurking in the trees nearby. Vampire senses have their uses, at least when you’re not trying to hide your confusion from them.

Benny opens the cabin door and sticks his head out. Sniffs the air, cocks his head like a hunting dog. Then he nods and steps out onto the deck, beckoning for Dean to join him.

They make it out of the marina easy enough, a brief headshake from Benny enough to confirm that nobody’s following them. 

Dean knows better than to be relieved. Just because there’s nobody tailing them right now doesn’t mean there won’t be any vamps—or any of Warren’s hunter buddies, if he’s gotten around to calling them yet—hanging around the harbor.

They head downriver, ducking in and out of alleys nearer the town, so they won’t be so easily visible from the water. They’re getting close to the harbor when Benny freezes and makes a _stay back_ gesture that Dean understands and obeys automatically. It unnerves Dean a little when he thinks about it too hard, how he’s fallen back into old patterns. Trusting Benny to look out for him and not deliver him into the hands of the nest. Acting like they’re a team.

Benny ducks back into the alleyway and turns to face him, and suddenly they’re too close together, breathing in each other’s space. Dean’s heart does a nervous little skip, and he takes a step back. “Somebody out there?” he asks.

Benny nods. “Gonna have to take the scenic route.”

So it’s back into the alleys, weaving through the streets to the warehouse. They’ll take another look in the one Dean searched the first time, since he never got to finish up in there. Then they’ll have to start taking longer shots. Dean still doesn’t know where to start.

He closes his hand around his amulet and tries not to think about the size of the task up ahead. Hey, he’s hunted down needles in haystacks before now. He found Cas in Purgatory, didn’t he, with Benny at his side?

Benny looks behind him, catches Dean’s eye. “Everything okay back there?” he asks.

Dean lets his hand fall to his side. “Peachy,” he says, and keeps moving.

He can do this. They can do this.

 

\----

 

They break in through the same side-door Dean used last time. The lock hasn’t been fixed yet, and the plank nailed across the door to hold it in place is so shoddily attached that a couple good yanks are all it takes. 

Dean paces up and down the interior of the warehouse slowly, holding onto the amulet. He goes down every aisle, because who knows how much new stuff has been loaded in here since his last visit, and leans in close to every stack of crates. 

When they’ve been in there half an hour and Benny throws a questioning look his way, he has to shrug and admit, “Nothing.”

They move on to the next warehouse, which is near enough empty, and also gives them jack. Then the next.

The one after that makes Dean hesitate on the approach. It’s the same one he snuck into on his first night here. Where he saw the vamps; where he nearly killed Benny.

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he thinks Benny slows down, too, as they duck into the alley beside it. He treads lighter, somehow, all of his movements more cautious.

“Think they’ll still be around?” Dean asks, low-voiced.

“Hard to say.” Benny inclines his head, listens. “Can’t say it’s my idea of smart, coming back to a place that’s been made, and by a hunter too. But if they got numbers…” He shrugs.

“You hear anything?”

“Not right now.” Benny ducks toward the door with renewed purpose, moves to take up his position keeping watch while Dean picks the lock. “I say we do this quick.”

“Roger that,” Dean agrees, and gets to work. 

The place is only partly full, which helps, but they’re still only halfway through the first stack of crates when Dean feels Benny’s hand on his shoulder.

Dean turns his head—then goes still when Benny raises a hand in warning. He lifts an eyebrow, a mute question, and Benny nods, grim-faced.

They need somewhere to hide. Dean glances around, looking for the corridor he snuck through the first time he came here. He doesn’t find it, but his eyes light on a door. If the layout is anything like the first warehouse they searched—the one he looked through the other night—it’s a storage closet. He grabs Benny by the arm, and jerks his head toward it. Benny nods and follows his lead.

The little storeroom definitely wasn’t designed to hold two grown-ass men, but they cram themselves in as best they can. Having vamps in the building is good for one thing, at least: it means Dean doesn’t have to think about how awkward being pressed up against Benny in a confined space would be otherwise. He holds the door shut with his left hand, fumbling for his machete—repossessed from Benny after the fight in the alley yesterday—with his right. 

He tries to breathe slowly, quietly enough to pass unnoticed by creepy-ass vampire hearing. It’s harder than he expects. Hiding from monsters is an everyday thing, no more reason to freak out than crossing the road—but squashed in against Benny in the dark, Dean finds himself conscious of every hitch in his breathing, every twitch of his muscles. 

Benny fumbles a little, like he’s trying to reach something—a weapon, maybe—and Dean inches back as far as he can without opening the door to give him space. 

He starts when Benny just touches his arm, and mouths, _Everything okay?_ at him.

Crap. Apparently his poker face sucks balls where Benny’s concerned. Dean nods in reply and turns back to the door.

Footsteps outside. Low voices. 

_…sick of hanging around here_ , Dean hears. And then, _Gotta load up…Old Man wants to set sail tomorrow…_

Tomorrow. He feels Benny tense beside him. The nest setting sail—that means they’re going on the hunt. It means more people getting killed. 

And it means Benny’s family leaving him behind. They’re a bunch of murdering assholes and Benny knows it—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t gonna bother him. Family’s more complicated than that. Dean gets it. 

Before he really knows what he’s doing, he reaches out and pats Benny’s arm. It isn’t a reassurance—it can’t be, and Dean knows it—but it’s something. He leaves his hand there a second longer than he should.

Benny’s eyes widen, but then Dean sees him relax, just a fraction.

Dean’s heart beats faster.

The footsteps. They’re getting closer. And then somebody says, _Hey, you hear something?_

Benny turns his head sharply. 

Closer.

_Yeah_ , says a voice, right outside the door, and Dean hears somebody sniff the air.

Adrenaline takes hold of him, then. His heart is racing, and there’s no calming it down. They’ve been made. They’re gonna have to fight. He feels a sudden, sick ache of absence instead of a throb of heat on his forearm.

They exchange a look. Dean tightens his grip on his machete. Doesn’t, doesn’t, reach into the depths of his mind.

And then the door opens.

It all happens fast, fast like a series of frames—the same way fights in Purgatory would only come back to him later as still images and delayed-action pain. Fighting was natural as breathing there, and it got so Dean didn’t even have to think about it until it was done and he and Benny were standing in a circle of severed monster parts, bleeding from gashes that were only just starting to hurt.

Two fanged faces snarling down at them through the door.

Benny barrelling forward, using all of his weight to knock one of the vamps onto his back. The other one staggering backward. Dean jumps in and runs straight for him, using the vamp’s own momentum to knock him down. The vamp thrashes like a landed fish. He’s strong, but Dean’s faster, raises the machete and brings it down swift and easy. There’s a wet noise, and the vamp’s head rolls.

Dean looks to his left. Benny’s crouched over the other vamp’s body, and when he raises his head there’s blood around his mouth and a feral glint in his eye.

He blinks once, twice. Wipes his face on a corner of the dead vamp’s jacket, and then he looks like Benny again. 

Dean’s breathing hard. He gets to his feet a little shakily; stands there for a second, checking himself over. Not for injuries—he might have skinned his knees tackling the vamp to the floor, but that’s the extent of the damage. He isn’t a hundred percent sure on what he’s checking for, really.

He catches Benny looking at him, then, and realizes his hand is pressed to his forearm, to the spot above the Mark—or its ghost, or whatever it is now. 

Dean lets his hand drop. “We gotta get out of here.” 

“I’m with you,” Benny says, and doesn’t say anything else, and all Dean can do is nod gratefully and make for the door.

 

\----

 

Back at the marina, Dean stops by the water’s edge. He pulls the amulet out from under his t-shirt. It hasn’t gotten warm once the whole evening.

“Still useless,” he mutters. He pulls at the cord, toys with the idea of just tossing it into the drink. It’s only the mental image of Sam’s woeful eyes the last time he threw it away that stops him.

He starts when Benny’s hand closes over his. It’s cold in the night air; strong, but his grip is tentative. Dean could break away from him easy if he wanted to.

“Trust me,” Benny says. “You’ll regret that.” His voice is gentle.

Dean sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I was just—yeah.” He looks down at the glimmer of light on the black water. “You’re right.”

Benny’s hand lingers on his just a moment too long. He looks like he wants to say something but he’s holding it back. Waiting for permission.

Dean pulls away. “I’m gonna turn in,” he says. He stuffs the amulet into his jacket pocket.

“Dean.”

He looks at Benny. Wets his lips. “What?”

Benny hesitates a second longer with his hand still held out toward Dean, not moving to touch him again. Like he’s trying to get a wild animal to come to him. All he says is, “You sure?” 

Dean blinks at him. “Sure about what?”

“Bout what you said the other day.” Benny lowers his gaze, then looks back up and meets Dean’s eyes. “That there was nothing between us. Nothing you wanna tell me about?”

“I dunno, man. I ain’t sure about much these days.” Dean looks away—at the water, at his feet, anywhere but at Benny. “But no. There wasn’t.”

It isn’t a lie, but it feels like one.


	8. Chapter 8

Neither of them feels like sleeping. 

They slip back on board the boat in silence. Without being asked, Dean grabs the whiskey bottle from where he left it last night and retrieves the tumblers from the floor. He gives the rims a cursory wipe with the least blood-spattered bit of his jacket hem, pours two inches of liquor into each of them, and hands one to Benny. He’s careful their fingers don’t touch.

They drink in silence. The water glimmers darkly, stretching out toward the sea. Dean’s getting used to the gentle movement of the boat under his feet. It might never be natural to him, like it so obviously is to Benny, but after they’ve stood there looking out at the water for a little while, he pretty much stops noticing it. They’re side by side, close enough that their elbows bump occasionally, but eye contact is optional.

Dean looks over, just the once, and catches Benny looking at him. That same bright, curious look he so often turns on Dean is in his eyes, and Dean thinks that maybe he wants to say something. He doesn’t. 

Other times, Dean can feel something on the tip of his tongue. It feels like it should be important, but he isn’t sure what it is, and when he sees Benny looking out to sea or at the silent harbor instead of at him, he finds that he doesn’t have the balls to spit it out and find out.

Eventually, his eyelids begin to droop. He should probably head down below deck to get some shut-eye. He’s gonna need a clear head tomorrow to figure out what they’re gonna do about the vamps, if anything. It’s possible Warren and his pals are watching them, too—and if that’s the case, anything Dean and Benny try has as big a chance of landing them right in the fire as helping. But the idea of doing nothing, and possibly letting the nest sail off into the sunset to slaughter more innocent people, doesn’t sit right with him either. Dean can hear Sam and Cas muttering darkly about time paradoxes in his head—but he knows damn well that if either of them were here right now, they wouldn’t be able to sit idly by, either.

The whole thing is more than his tired brain wants to deal with. If he goes to bed, though, he’s gonna lie awake worrying the whole night. Up here, Benny’s right next to him, solid and real. Okay, Benny’s a dilemma all by himself, but his presence is grounding, the way nothing else here is. The way it was in Purgatory. The way it might have been afterwards, if things had been different.

Dean lets his eyes close. Lets himself droop, half-consciously, against Benny’s side; lets Benny take some of the load that’s weighing him down.

His breath catches in his throat as he feels Benny take notice, the shift of his shoulders as he switches his tumbler to the other hand. He braces himself for a wry comment, a nudge to go get some sleep, but instead, there’s a pause the length of a single breath, and then Benny’s arm settles around him. He lets out a breath and leans into it, relaxing for the first time since he landed in this godforsaken fucking decade. Maybe since long before (after?) that.

He’s just about asleep on his feet when he feels Benny tense up at his side and hears him hiss, “Get down.”

Dean drops before his brain even really kicks in, hand going to his gun, a spike of adrenaline piercing through him. He’s wide awake again right away: the shocked, gritty-eyed start into awareness that was his morning wake-up call every damn day in Purgatory, and that makes the world seem momentarily too big and too present, pressing in too hard on his eyeballs. He grits his teeth, forces himself to ignore his rocketing pulse and just watch Benny.

Benny turns where he stands, slow and deliberate, holding one hand up in a _stay back_ motion when Dean makes to get to his feet and follow. He reaches for the machete at his belt, pulls it loose and tucks the hand holding it behind his back.

There’s a scratch at the cabin door.

Benny casts a quick glance back in Dean’s direction. Jerks his head to one side. Dean blinks, then figures it out. Benny’s gesturing him to get into the shadows, where he won’t be visible from the door. If their unexpected visitor is unwelcome, at least they’ll have the element of surprise. Dean scoots over. Benny nods, then opens the door.

Dean can’t make out the person’s face, but when Benny exclaims, “Jimmy! What the hell you doin’ here, brother?” in a voice full of false geniality, he figures they aren’t a person at all.

“I got out!” the other vamp—Jimmy—replies. His voice is reedy, high with excitement. “I got away from him. The old man. I wanna—man, I wanna thank you, Benny.”

“Yeah?” Benny’s voice is level. Dean can picture his face, one eyebrow raised. “How’s that?”

“You know how it’s been, brother. Out on the water all by ourselves, feeding on whatever flotsam comes our way. Like being in the goddamn desert when we got an all-you-can-drink buffet right here on the shore. It was killin’ me. Old man wants us to hang on, wait for the _Rosa_ to head out tomorrow, but I ain’t doing it. No more taking orders. Lone wolf from here on out.” Dean can hear the big, dumb grin in the guy’s voice. “All because you showed me it could be done.” 

_Rosa_. The name nags at him. Dean can’t place it off the top of his head, sleep still fogging his thoughts, but it’s definitely familiar. Wasn’t the name of Andrea’s yacht; that was _Artemis_. One of the other yachts in the marina? Or one of the boats he helped load while he was working at the harbor?

Jimmy steps forward, pulls Benny into a one-armed hug and claps him on the back. Dean tenses up; grabs his knife and shuffles forward on his knees as quietly as he can, keeping to the shadows. If this is a trick—well, they’re probably outnumbered, and that means Dean’s walking dead already. No harm in giving Benny his help.

But Benny’s hand twitches behind his back. He gestures with the machete, and Dean understands it as easy as if Purgatory were yesterday. It means, _stand down_.

“I appreciate that, Jimmy,” Benny says. “Was brave of you, striking out on your own.” He pauses. “Mighty stupid, too.” He steps back, then; takes a single swing while Jimmy’s still blinking at him in bewilderment. 

Jimmy’s head hits the deck like a soccer ball. His body goes down like a sack of shit, and then Benny turns back to Dean, breathing hard, the front of his shirt streaked with dark blood.

Dean lets out the breath he’s been holding and gets to his feet.

“So,” he says, “I guess we’re hiding another body tonight.”

 

\----

 

They’re halfway back from their second garbage disposal run when Dean breaks the resigned silence. The adrenaline’s long since worn off, and exhaustion’s hitting him twice as hard. His eyes itch and he can’t stop yawning. 

“This Jimmy bloodsucker,” he says, as much to keep himself awake as anything. “He was on his own? Wasn’t leading the rest of your buddies to us?”

Benny shakes his head. He’s been looking out into the water since they ditched Jimmy’s body, his expression distant and contemplative. “Never was what I’d call loyal, Jimmy,” he says. “Had somethin’ of a problem with authority. Woulda run off anyway, sometime, I figure.”

Dean cocks his head, something in Benny’s expression making him curious. “And what would’ve happened to him then?”

“Nest woulda run him down. Soon as he started dropping bodies, they woulda tracked him. Maybe dragged him back, but more likely—” Benny shrugs “—all I did back there was hasten the inevitable.”

“So, why’d he come to you? If he didn’t trust anybody? Doesn’t exactly sound like you were best friends.”

“Well, he’d been with the nest a year or so. Long enough for his human family to think he was dead, I guess—wherever they might be. And it ain’t like people like us got much of anybody else.” Benny looks down again, his eyes falling into shadow.

Of course. Benny had a family, before he got turned. Elizabeth had to come from somewhere. Dean does the math. Thirty years, give or take, since Benny got turned. If he had a wife, she could be dead by now—or long since moved on, found somebody else to grow old with. Kids? They’ll be grown; probably wouldn’t know Benny if they saw him. That’s gotta be tough.

The idea of talking about it doesn’t exactly fill Dean with joy. But hey, it’s Benny. He has to try.

“You had somebody?” he ventures. “I mean—before all this crap?”

Benny smiles, distant and faint. “Sofia.” 

That’s all he says for a long time—just the name, and Dean starts to think that maybe it’s all he’s getting. 

“Knew each other since we were five years old,” Benny goes on, then. “When we hit seventeen she decided we were getting married, and that was that.” The smile on his face is fond, though. “Me, I couldn’t believe my luck. Never thought she’d let herself be tied down, let alone to me. Prettiest girl in town, smart, fierce. Seven little brothers and sisters and every one of them worshipped her.” His smile fades a little. “Said she wanted just as many kids herself, but we only ever got around to one. ‘Licia. And she got so sick, when she was small—” He swallows. “I don’t even know if she made it.”

Jesus. Dean knows the nest are isolated, out at sea like that—but he thought there’d be a way. He thought Benny would find a way. But the stricken look on his face says no.

You aren’t supposed to tell people the future.

You aren’t supposed to, but that ship’s already sailed. So Dean reaches out and touches Benny’s shoulder, looks him in the eyes and says, “She’s alive.”

Benny raises his eyes from the water. He’s slow about it, cautious, and when he says, “How do you figure?” Dean can tell he’s trying not to sound like he believes it.

There’s light in his eyes, though. Hope—hope that Dean put there. And after all the crap he’s pulled on Benny—after all the sacrifices, after the way Dean cut him loose—he probably doesn’t deserve to feel proud of that. But he does.

“I don’t figure,” Dean tells him. “I know. Can’t say how, but—trust me on this one, okay? I know.”

Benny just nods. “Okay,” he says. He goes quiet for a minute, and then he looks at Dean. “You got people, right?” he says. “Family?”

Dean blinks back at him. “Sure,” he says, not certain where this is going.

“Your brother.” Benny says, and Dean gives a smile of acknowledgement. “You talked about him. But nobody else? No wife, no kids?”

Dean feels the smile freeze on his face. Lisa’s and Ben’s faces don’t surface in his mind as often as they probably should, these days. Tells you just how full of crap Dean’s head actually is, that it’s enough to crowd them out.

“No,” he says, quietly. “Almost, this one time, but—no.”

Benny nods and doesn’t ask any more questions, obviously sensing that he shouldn’t push. But the quiet’s too loud now that Dean’s _thinking_ about all that crap. The regular lapping of the waves and the sound of his own breathing threaten to drive him crazy, the same way the sound of a ticking clock would keep him up into the small hours when he was living with Lisa. It made the quiet that bit more noticeable; and Dean never really stopped thinking of quiet as anything but the calm before the next storm.

“It didn’t work out,” he blurts, because it’s better than listening to the quiet. “But I got Sammy. Ever since we were kids. And Cas. He ain’t blood—hell, he ain’t even human—but nobody gets to be that big of a pain in our asses who isn’t family. And we got friends. Jody and the kids. Guess Claire’s more Cas’s family than ours, but—” Dean shrugs, trails off. “’S about it.” 

The quiet is heavier than before. Heavy with all the unspoken names; the ones that aren’t on that list anymore and should be. Benny’s is one of them.

Benny’s hand on his shoulder surprises him. He blinks and looks at it.

“Didn’t mean to upset you none,” Benny says. 

There’s a rare gentleness in his voice. Dean’s heard it once or twice before, in the middle of the gray, hours-long twilights that passed for night in Purgatory. Benny would talk about sailing, sometimes. He never mentioned Andrea’s name back then, but his voice and his face would soften, and sometimes Dean would find himself wondering what it might be like to have that look directed at him. 

Then he’d make himself stop wondering and get to his feet, mutter something about how they’d been in once place too long and they needed to get moving. Benny always followed him, never complained.

“You didn’t,” Dean says. He looks up and meets Benny’s eyes. “What brought that on, anyway?”

“Like I said, brother. Didn’t spend time with nobody but vamps in a long while.” Benny’s eyes go distant. “’Til the old man sent me on shore? Don’t think I’d really looked at people in—hell, decades.” He pauses, then. It’s a long pause, full of hesitation, but when he speaks again, it sounds like he’s decided something. “The last boat we took down, before we came here? It belonged to a family. Two kids on there, couldn’t have been more than twelve, thirteen years old. Twins, I guess. One of them—Sorento had her by the hair, was just about ready to rip her throat out. She saw me—fangs weren’t showing, I guess. And she screamed for me to help her.” Benny shakes his head. “I just stood there. Went right through me, how she looked at me. Like she really believed I was gonna save her, right until she felt his teeth in her neck. And I couldn’t move.”

Dean’s always known Benny had this kind of shit in his past. It was there in the care with which he did everything—in how he was always the one who held back when Dean was slicing up some hapless freak who might’ve known a thing or two, back in Purgatory. In how he never stuck around to give a dead monster an extra kick in the ribs, even if it had been trying to bite his face off half a minute earlier. You don’t get to be that careful without being at least a little afraid of yourself. 

Funny, but that was one thing about Benny that always reminded him of Sam.

Just because Dean knew that doesn’t mean he ever wanted to hear the gory details. Benny used to be a bad guy. Now he isn’t. That’s always been enough for Dean.

Right now, though? It seems like Benny needs to spill. Besides which, since he last knew Benny, Dean’s put enough red in his own ledger to make a Romero movie. He knows where he stands, and it doesn’t even share a continent with the moral high ground. So he doesn’t cut Benny off—just nods and listens.

“I went looking for the other kid,” Benny goes on. “Put her in one of the lifeboats. Don’t know what I was thinking, but—seemed like the only thing to do.” His voice falters. “Old man shot her before she was fifty feet from the boat. If he’d seen me help her escape, guess I woulda been next down to see Davy Jones.”

“But you ain’t killed anybody since,” Dean says, after a long moment. “Right?”

He knows it isn’t worth shit in moments like this. Something compels him to say it anyway.

“Right.” 

Benny doesn’t say anything else for a long while, doesn’t pretend it makes anything better. Dean appreciates that.

Benny looks up at him, then. Starts to come back to him. “And then you come along. And—I don’t know, brother. Or maybe I do know, ‘cause it’s sittin’ in front of me. There’s something there. In people. Something that’s worth something.”

Dean looks down, feeling himself flush with shame. Yeah—Benny wouldn’t be saying this shit if he knew. He wouldn’t be saying it to Dean, anyway, if he knew what Dean was, what Dean’s gonna do to him in his future. Dean should tell him. Shouldn’t let Benny keep looking at him like that when it’s nothing he can ever keep, when it’s all an illusion.

But he can’t find the words. Telling the truth hasn’t ever been his strong suit.

And then he hears an echo in his head. _I started to see something._ That was what Benny said about Andrea, wasn’t it? It’s close enough to what he said just now.

Huh.

Dean still hasn’t gotten around to his admission when Benny picks up his oar and says quietly, “Come on. We better head back.” 

His smile is faint and rueful, and when Dean looks at him, Benny doesn’t meet his eyes.

Well, it’s no more than he deserves. He tries not to think too hard about it. Concentrate on the simple movements of rowing. Fill his mind with nothing.

He’s tired enough that it isn’t hard. He drifts, and they’re halfway back to the harbor when it comes to him, surfacing out of the nothing.

“ _Rosa_ ,” he says into the silence.

“What now?” Benny looks around at him, brows drawing together beneath the brim of his cap.

“The _Rosa_. That’s the boat your buddies were going after, right?”

“Sounded that way.”

“I know which boat it is,” Dean says. Dread settles in his gut. “I know who’s gonna be on it.”

 

\----

 

Dean’s up and back at the harbor by the time the crews start work. He slept fitfully through the early morning while Benny kept a lookout, but it’s done nothing to revive him. Between the smudges of shadow under his eyes, the bruises from the fight in the warehouse last night, and the fact that he hasn’t shaved in a couple days, he’s pretty sure he looks like hell. Not like Mr. Trustworthy, that’s for sure, but there isn’t much he can do.

He skulks around by the warehouses, hoping to avoid the eyes of Walt and the other guys he worked with. They’re gonna have questions about where he disappeared to, and the fewer people he has to bullshit this morning, the better.

No such luck. Dean’s standing in the shadow of a warehouse, watching the waterfront, when a voice calls, “Hey! Winchester! You still owe me a game.”

He squints, looking for the source of the voice. Richie, jogging toward him with a hand raised in greeting. Dean nods.

Richie stops short, when he’s close enough to get a good look at Dean. “Man,” he says. “What happened to you?”

“Had a disagreement with a couple guys.” Dean shrugs. “It happens.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Lemme guess,” he says. “Poker game?”

“Sure.” Just then, Dean’s gaze snags on somebody else—or rather, three somebody elses, heading along the front toward the harbormaster’s office at a steady clip. He claps Richie on the arm and shoulders past him. “Gotta go.”

Richie calls after him, he thinks, but Dean doesn’t wait to hear what he says. He makes straight for Faith and the kids, waving his arms in the air.

She doesn’t stop, intent on her errand. 

“Hey!” Dean calls. “Hey! Mrs.—” He stops, realizing he doesn’t actually know her last name. “Faith! Wait up!”

She’s frowning when she turns to look at him—understandable, because half the guys on the harbor have stopped what they’re doing to look. Her frown deepens when she catches sight of Dean’s face, and she purses her lips and makes as if to start walking again.

Okay, so it looks like he’s officially gone from ‘helpful stranger’ to ‘crazy guy’ in her eyes, which isn’t gonna help his case. Still, he has to try.

“Please,” he says, lowering his voice with an effort. “I gotta talk to you. This is gonna sound nuts, but—it’s important. Please, just hear me out.”

Faith looks at him for a moment longer, considering. Dean can see her weighing the potential inconvenience of talking to him against the potential creep factor of being shouted at by some weirdo all the way to the harbormaster’s office, and it makes him feel like kind of an asshole—but not enough that he doesn’t let out a sigh of relief when she relents and nods.

“Connie!” she says. “Take your brother over to the office.” Connie’s eyes light up when she catches sight of Dean—obviously remembering him as Icecream Guy—and she opens her mouth as if to protest, but Faith holds up a hand before she can. “Now,” she says. “And be careful! It’s wet.”

The kids scurry off, and Faith crosses her arms and turns back to Dean.

“Fine,” she says. “Say what you have to say. Then leave me and my children alone.” She doesn’t exactly look receptive, but Dean can’t afford to spend time sugarcoating things right now.

“You booked passage out of here on the _Rosa_ , right?” he asks.

Faith nods. “Leaving today.”

“No, you’re not.”

She stares at him. “Excuse me?”

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. “Faith,” he says, “you have to listen to me. You can’t get on that ship.”

Faith glances behind her. Dean knows that look: it’s the searching-for-a-sane-person-to-call-for-help look, the one he sees on freaked-out civilians when he tells them just what’s been eating their neighbors. But her voice when she speaks is clipped and even. “I don’t _have_ to do anything,” she tells him. “And I suggest you leave me alone.”

“It isn’t safe,” Dean insists, hearing his voice get a notch louder even though he’s doing his best not to yell. Man, he wishes Sam was here to handle this part.

“Isn’t safe,” Faith repeats, narrowing her eyes at him. “And you’d know that how?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” Dean says. “Just—listen to me. You got kids to worry about. You’ll be putting them in danger if you go out there.” He casts around for a reason and lands on the most obvious one he can think of. “There’s gonna be a storm.”

Faith just raises an eyebrow, looks up at the clear sky. The water in the harbor glimmers calmly. Dean glares at it.

“It might not look like it now,” he says, “but it’s gonna blow up. I know a guy who knows this stuff.”

Faith sighs and looks at him evenly. “Suppose you’re telling the truth,” she says. “You really have some friend who thinks a storm’s coming. If he was right, don’t you think they’d radio the harbor before the ship sets out? They have the technology to see these things coming now. No ship is going to set sail into a storm.”

“Faith—”

“But if I were to take your advice and not get on the ship? The tickets are already paid for. Our baggage is already stowed. This is our one chance at a new life. I can’t afford to pay for it twice over.” She blinks, her gaze flickering briefly out to sea, and for a moment she looks very tired.

Of course. She’s running away from something. Dean remembers thinking that, first time they talked.

“I get it,” he says, quietly. “I do.”

Faith looks at him in surprise. “Do you?”

“Well, not all of it. I get that you wanna get away from something.” Faith frowns at him, but doesn’t disagree, so he pushes on. “You wanna tell me why it’s so important you get on that boat?”

Honestly, Dean isn’t really sure where he’s going with this. He just thinks, maybe, if he knows where she’s coming from, he can figure out a way to talk her round.

She considers him for a moment, then puts her head on one side. “If I tell you, will you promise to stop this—” She waves a hand. “Whatever this is?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again. “Okay. Promise.”

Faith nods. Her expression changes, like all the annoyance goes out of her. “My Stephen,” she says, after a moment. “My husband—was white. His parents didn’t exactly approve.” Her voice is tight. “And when he passed—well. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want anybody’s charity. But that they couldn’t give their own grandchildren the time of day—” She breaks off.

“I’m sorry.” Dean half-reaches out to pat her shoulder, then thinks better of it and pulls his hand back. “Must’ve been tough.”

“I lived with it,” Faith says. “I didn’t need their help. Not after the way they’d treated us. But then things got—strange.”

Dean frowns, the little alarm bell in the back of his head that always goes off when he hears this kind of thing making itself heard. “Strange how?”

“Mrs. Roberts—that is, Stephen’s mother—showed up at our house a few months ago. She seemed confused. Rambling. If it hadn’t been the middle of the day, I would’ve thought she’d been drinking.”

“Rambling? About what?” If there’s one thing Dean’s learned in his long and shitty career, it’s that you always listen to the crazy person.

Faith shakes her head, her expression turning puzzled. “That was the strange thing. She kept talking about blood.”

“She threaten you?”

“No. Not like that. She kept saying, _our_ blood. Talking about her grandfather. I knew she was—”

“A racist asshat?”

She gives a tight little smile. “You said it, not me. Still, she wasn’t making much sense. Stephen’s father came and got her, in the end, but after that—I didn’t feel safe anymore. I needed to get out. For the children’s sake, more than my own. I owe them that.”

Faith raises her chin a little, her face set in determination, and Dean’s heart sinks. Doesn’t sound like there’s gonna be any persuading her.

“You’re right,” he says. One last effort. “You owe them a future. One where they’ll be safe. And that’s why you can’t get on that boat. Because if you do—you might not ever get off again.” Dean turns on his best pleading look, wishing that he had Sam’s power of puppy-eyes, but Faith just sighs and shakes her head.

“Maybe you mean well,” she says. “You know, I think you do. I think you believe what you’re saying.” She shakes her head. “But I’m going to need more than good intentions to throw our chance at a new life away.”

She turns and walks away from him toward the office. The kids come running toward her as she goes. 

“Mom!” the younger one—Christopher—calls out. “Mom, Connie splashed water at me!”

“Did not!” Connie protests, grabbing for his hand. “You did that yourself! I _told_ you, you have to look where you’re going, or you’ll fall in and sea monsters will get you!” There’s a wicked gleam in her eye. Well hey, scaring the crap out of kid brothers is an older sibling prerogative.

She and Christopher run past him, a flurry of giggles and shrieks with Faith calling, “Walk, don’t run!” after them, and that’s when Dean feels it. 

The amulet. Hot against his skin.

He turns on the spot, looking around, but there are no packing crates nearby. Nothing that could be hiding the key.

It takes Dean a moment to process it. Warren’s prince guy passed the key down to his descendants. One in each generation. Only, maybe the key wasn’t an object. Maybe it was something in their genes. 

In their blood.

Dean’s been around Faith alone before now, and the amulet didn’t do anything then. Little Christopher, too. That leaves big sis. Connie.

She’s the key.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean’s heart sinks. 

The kid is the key. And that means they’re fucked six ways to Sunday whatever he does.

Last time the key was heard of, it was on that boat. Which means even if Dean does manage to persuade them off of it, he’s fucking with history even worse than he already has. But if he _doesn’t_ —

He groans and scrubs at his eyes. Forces himself to think it through. 

If the boat was gonna go down, or disappear into the fucking Bermuda triangle or whatever, then Cas would’ve told him. He might not always have the best idea of what counts as relevant information, but he wouldn’t toss Dean into the middle of a shipwreck without a little warning. So if Connie gets on the boat—that doesn’t necessarily mean that it sinks, or that the vamps get it.

Huh.

Cas’s info came from Metatron. So, the boat was the last place _he_ knew of the key being. Doesn’t mean it vanished into the ether—just that, wherever it was, angels couldn’t see it.

Dean digs in his pocket, and apparently his lucky stars are doing their job right for once in his damn life, because he digs out a pencil stub and a scrap of paper.

“Faith,” he says. “Hold up. Just a second.”

She turns a pissed-off look on him. “You said—”

“I know. I know, I said I’d leave you alone, and I will. Just—one more second. One.”

Faith doesn’t look like she’s going to comply, but Christopher hangs onto her skirt, staring at Dean with wide-eyed childish curiosity, and Connie tugs at her arm, whispering “Mommy, what’s the weird man doing?” loud enough that Dean couldn’t avoid hearing it if he wanted to.

Luckily, the sigils Dean memorized back when Zach and co. were the assholes of the month haven’t deserted him. He draws them out with a quick, steady hand, and then holds the scrap of paper out to Connie. Her eyes go comically wide and she stares at it, but makes no move to take it.

“You’re gonna need this,” he tells her, ignoring Faith’s startled look and the aborted step she makes toward him. “Please. It’ll keep you safe.”

Connie doesn’t answer, but after a moment, she takes the scrap of paper, folds it up and stuffs it into the pocket of her dress. 

“Are we done here?” says Faith.

Dean sighs. “Yeah. We’re done.”

“Good.” And she sweeps the kids away toward the office, throwing an anxious glance back over her shoulder, like she wants to be sure Dean isn’t following them.

Well, that could’ve gone better. Could’ve gone worse, though. If Dean can just help make sure the _Rosa_ gets where it’s going, vamp-free, then his job here is done.

Because if Connie is the key, and the key is in her blood—well, he doesn’t have to think too hard to figure out what a spell that calls for the key’s ‘essence’ actually means. One thing’s for certain: nobody’s gonna be trying it on Dean’s watch.

 

\----

 

Benny’s waiting in the shadows, a little ways down the waterfront. He steps out as Dean approaches him, eyebrows raised in question, but when he catches sight of Dean’s expression, his face falls.

He places a hand on Dean’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Weren’t really expectin’ the lady to go for it, were you, brother?”

“Nah.” Dean looks down at his boots and breathes out heavily. “But that ain’t it.”

“It ain’t?”

Dean closes his eyes. Opens them again. Benny’s watching him patiently, hand still resting on his shoulder—and it’s comforting, somehow. Grounding. Keeps him tethered to the here-and-now—or the then-and-there, whichever—when his brain wants to run in circles of worry.

“The kid,” he says, after a moment. “Connie, Faith’s eldest. _She’s_ the key.”

Benny looks at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then his eyes widen as he catches on. “The key you were looking for?” he says. “The one that might just close the gates of Hell?”

“Bingo.” Dean presses his fingertips to the bump that the amulet makes under his shirt. It’s cooled now, but he can still feel the tingle of remembered heat against his skin. “So, I guess that’s it. Mission aborted.”

Benny’s fingers tighten on his shoulder. “Back to the future?” 

The way he says it, so totally sincere, makes Dean snort out an involuntary laugh despite the crappiness of the situation. It’s only when he hears Benny ask, “What’s so funny?” and sees those bright blue eyes trained on his face in confusion that he stops and recognizes the sadness there in Benny’s voice, in the way he’s looking at Dean.

Dean knocked him out with dead man’s blood and kidnapped him less than a week ago, and Benny’s still acting like he’s actually gonna miss him when he goes.

He sobers and meets Benny’s eyes. “Not just yet,” he says. “Wherever that boat’s going with that kid on it? I gotta make sure it gets there safe.”

“Then I’m with you,” Benny tells him. He says it with quiet determination, and Dean feels a brief, warm spark of gratitude before reality kicks in and he remembers he can’t let Benny come with him. 

“No,” he says, “you ain’t.”

Benny frowns. “Nest ain’t lacking in manpower,” he says. “You’re gonna need all the help you can get. I know how they fight. Not to mention—and no offense—you ain’t exactly got your sea legs. Could use a steady hand to get you out there.”

“That ain’t it,” Dean tells him. “Not that I couldn’t use you. Honestly, ain’t many people I’d rather have my back in a fight. But you can’t come. You can’t let the rest of the vamps know where you are.”

“They’re gonna come after me sometime. Might as well be now.” 

Dean glares. “Don’t give me that crap. You’re gonna get out of here. Get away from them.” For a few years, anyway.

Benny just shrugs. “Still hanging around here, ain’t I? See, it seems to me, if I was all that worried about them takin’ their revenge, I woulda headed inland the moment I escaped from that apartment.”

“Okay, so you don’t give a crap what happens to you. I know how that is. But the thing is—I know what happens to you. Is gonna happen.” Dean sighs. “Got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

This isn’t exactly the time or place Dean wanted to have this conversation. He didn’t exactly want to have it at all, and not just because of the whole future spoilers thing. _Yeah, so we’ve got this kind-of-weird more-than-friends thing going here, and maybe I’ve been hung up on you since Purgatory, but now you need to go fall in love with your girlfriend so you can get good and get killed and then I can meet you and_ get _hung up on you, and are you feeling dizzy yet, ‘cause I’m pretty sure my head just fell off_. This is gonna be real smooth sailing.

Still. Benny’s looking at him with a question in his eyes, and Dean’s always known he owes Benny big time, but right now the feeling ninjas up on him and kicks him square in the solar plexus. He can’t refuse.

He closes his eyes for a second. “I mean,” he says, when he opens them again, “I know the reason you stayed away from the nest. Became one of the good guys. You met—you’re gonna meet somebody.”

Dean doesn’t really know what kind of a reaction he’s expecting—skepticism, or curiosity, or laughter—but Benny just raises an eyebrow and looks like he’s waiting for _Dean_ to catch up. He doesn’t.

“I already did meet somebody,” Benny says, then, and the look on his face—intent and certain and soft—makes Dean’s heart do a skip of surprise. Of joy, brief and bright, before Dean grits his teeth and tamps down on it.

“That’s not—” His mouth is dry. He breaks off, swallows. “That’s not what I meant. I meant—you meet this girl. Fall in love, sail all around the world with her. She shows you that there’s—I dunno, good in humanity, or something like that. You’re gonna tell me all about it, fifty years from now. You already did.”

“ _I_ didn’t,” Benny points out. “That other me did. One who never knew you before he died.”

“Or just didn’t tell me about it.” Dean shakes his head. “It happens, Benny. I’m there when it does.”

Benny sighs. “Dean,” he says. “What you’re asking—you want me to care more about somebody I ain’t ever met than about you.” He looks Dean dead in the eyes. “Don’t think I can do that, chief.”

“Dude,” Dean says. “You just met me a couple days ago. And half that time I had you chained up in a hotel room.”

“And I still can’t let you go out there alone.” Benny’s still watching him, his expression wide open, and fuck. _Fuck_. Dean’s lost whatever control he thought he had over this. He’s screwed it up, big time. “Don’t that tell you something?”

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Dean protests. His voice sounds weak, catches in his throat, and suddenly he can hear his pulse very loud in his ears. Benny’s touching his cheek, then; grasping his arm to pull him into the shadows and press their mouths together.

It’s not a surprise, but it is a shock. The softness of it, under the rough scrape of beard, the way Benny’s big hand comes up to cup the back of his head. Benny’s gentle, and Dean realizes he’s not a hundred percent sure of this. He’s waiting for Dean to kiss back—or to shove him away, say _no_.

Which he should do. This is a terrible idea, for more reasons than he has brainpower to count right now. But just in this second, he can’t remember a single one of them.

He parts his lips and edges in closer, wraps his arms around Benny’s waist and holds on.

It only lasts a moment. Dean’s mind won’t stay blank forever, and he breaks the kiss, breathing hard.

Benny looks at him. “You okay?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. “No. I don’t know.” Opens them again. “Okay.”

“Gonna have to elaborate on that for me, brother.” Benny says it quietly, his hand sliding around so he can brush Dean’s cheek with his thumb. Dean has to fight the urge to close his eyes again and lean into it.

“I mean, okay, I believe you. I’m gonna shut up about Andrea.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s the chick future-you—you know.”

“Yeah.” Benny gives him a little smile. “Glad to hear it. But there’s a _but_ coming, ain’t there?”

Dean wants to lower his eyes, only Benny’s still holding him, still touching his face, and he can’t, somehow. “I still ain’t taking you with.”

There’s a flicker of unhappiness in Benny’s eyes, but his voice stays even. “I get a reason?” he asks.

“Sure.” Dean owes Benny that much. “Warren. The guy from the magic store.”

“Yeah,” Benny says, wryly. “Might have been out of it, but I remember.”

“He told me he was gonna call some of his hunter buddies up here, take a crack at the nest. Benny—you and me, we’re a hell of a team, but this is more than a two-man job. There’s gonna be civilians on that boat. Kids. Just us, there’s no way we can protect them and take out the vamps at the same time.”

Benny nods, slowly. “You need numbers.”

“Exactly.” Dean sighs. “And Warren’s already seen you. He knows what you are—and he’s got no reason to trust you. Hell, he’s got no real reason to trust me. Far as Warren and his pals are concerned, you’re just one more bloodsucker needs taking out.”

“I’d be in the way.”

That isn’t what Dean was thinking—and honestly, a selfish part of him wants to bring Benny along anyway, because then at least there’d be somebody in this fight that he trusts. But he can’t drag Benny into this, can’t ask him to risk his life again. If this is the only way to persuade him—well. He shrugs.

“Pretty much,” he says. “Sorry, man.”

“I get it,” Benny says.

Dean expects him to pull away, then. Act like the kiss never happened. That’s what Dean would do, if he was in Benny’s situation.

Apparently, though, Benny isn’t the same kind of asshole Dean is, because he just slides his hand down Dean’s arm and laces their fingers together and squeezes gently. “I still got your back,” he says. “Anytime you need it. Just gotta ask.”

He can’t possibly know how much he means it. Dean has to close his eyes for a second, because he’s afraid if he looks at Benny’s face he’s gonna say something dumb that he won’t be able to take back.

“Thanks,” he says, once he’s gotten himself together. His voice only shakes a little.

Benny gives his hand another squeeze, then lets go. “You should go tell your friend what’s goin’ down,” he says. 

Dean swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I should do that.”

“See you back at the boat.”

Benny turns away, threading his way down side-streets back toward the marina. Dean watches until he’s out of sight. Then he makes for the magic store.

 

\----

 

The store is open, this time, and Warren’s leafing through a book behind the counter. The bell jingles as Dean enters, and Warren gives an absent glance up. Then he raises an eyebrow and starts to get to his feet, and Dean remembers that he probably still looks like he’s in town for the International Hobo Convention.

“Long story,” he says, by way of explanation. “It can wait. I got news.”

Warren motions him into the back room.

Dean sinks gratefully into one of the chairs without waiting to be invited. Even Warren’s hard-ass furniture is blissfully comfortable after a couple days trying to keep below eye-level on the deck of a boat. He closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again when Warren sets a steaming cup of coffee down in front of him.

“So,” Warren says, as Dean takes a grateful gulp. “News?”

“Yeah.” Dean meets his eyes across the table. “The vamp nest. They’re planning on attacking a passenger ship, tonight. The _Rosa_. I hope your buddies have arrived in town, because we’re gonna need every man we can get.”

Warren nods. “I’ll make some calls.” Then he cocks his head. “You get that from the vamp you caught the other night?”

Dean takes another swallow of coffee to give himself time to think; decides on the truth. Or some of it, anyway. “Uh, actually, no. One of his pals showed up.” He shrugs. “Guess it was a rescue mission. Found a note on the body.”

“The body?”

“Yeah. Dealt with.” Dean hesitates, then looks Warren dead in the eye. “Both of ‘em.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Warren peers back at him. “I’m sure you did what you had to, but it would’ve been helpful if we could’ve asked some questions.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean finishes his coffee. “Like you said. Did what I had to.”

Warren frowns, but after a moment, he nods. “I’ll admit,” he says, “I was getting worried. No word from you, and when I tried your place, it was empty.”

“I got made,” Dean tells him. “Been hiding out.”

“So I see.” Warren gestures toward a staircase in back. “Bathroom’s upstairs, if you want to clean up. I’ll call the others.”

That actually sounds like a fucking awesome idea. Dean nods and tramps up the stairs, and once he’s washed up and gotten rid of the scruff on his chin—with the goddamn straight razor that’s in the bathroom, which is a pain in the ass and leaves a nick at his jawline that won’t stop bleeding no matter how much he dabs at it—he feels a hell of a lot more human. 

He dries his face and starts to pull his shirt back on. He’s halfway down the stairs, one arm in and one out, when he hears Warren talking and realizes he’s still on the phone.

 _Rosa_ , he hears, muffled through the door. _Meet on Henderson_. There’s a brief silence while whoever is on the other end of the line talks. Then: _…don’t know…trustworthy. But there are more of us. Can’t…civilians…_

Another pause. Dean takes the last few steps as loud as he can, and by the time he opens the door, Warren has hung up. He turns a bland smile in Dean’s direction.

“Feeling better?” he asks.

“Awesome,” Dean says.

“We could head into town,” Warren says. “Grab a bite to eat before we meet up with the others. Jacobs—friend of mine from New York—is watching the harbor. He’ll leave a note at the store if he sees anything else.”

“Actually, I got a couple things to take care of first.” Dean watches Warren’s expression for signs of suspicion, but the guy’s poker face is good. “I’ll see you back here around six?”

Warren just nods, and Dean lets himself out.

He can’t exactly blame Warren for distrusting him. He shows up out of nowhere, disappears, then reappears with info from a conveniently dead source? Dean wouldn’t trust a guy who did that, either.

Still, it makes him twice as glad Benny agreed to stay away.

Dean takes a scenic route back toward the marina, weaving and doubling back on himself until he’s sure he’s lost anybody who might be tailing him. It’s mid-afternoon by the time he gets back to the boat. The place is busy, and he has to wait around for a quiet interval before he can climb back on board without being seen. 

Benny’s sitting on the floor, nursing a tumbler of whiskey in both hands, though it doesn’t look like he’s touched it. His cap is pulled down low, casting his eyes into shadow—but when Dean climbs on board he looks up, his distant expression giving way to a faint smile.

“All fixed up?” he says.

“Yeah.” Dean slides to the deck beside him. “Don’t think they trust me, but I don’t need ‘em to.”

Benny looks at him out the corner of his eye. “You just need ‘em to save them kids.”

Dean shrugs. “’S the job.”

Though if he’s honest with himself, there’s more to it than that. Dean sees enough victims of the supernatural that they all start to blur into one after a while, but he _wants_ Connie and her mom and her brother to get where they’re going safely. It isn’t just a job. Okay, so the kid’s got some special destiny that could help save the world—but if Metatron ever figures out where she is, or some other angel, or hell, even some other hunter, she might not have a choice about it. Dean knows that ain’t right, knows it deep and intimate. He remembers the helpless anger of it, how it felt back in the days when he was marked by Heaven instead of Hell.

Maybe the remembering shows on his face, because Benny sets down his undrunk whiskey and touches Dean’s forearm, right over the spot where the Mark used to be.

It’s coincidence. Benny doesn’t know what the Mark is, if he’s even noticed it at all, and it’s covered by Dean’s shirt—but still, it makes something fearful stir inside him, and he jerks his arm back out of Benny’s grasp.

Dean hasn’t been in an honest-to-God, bloody fight—the kind that were his bread and butter in Purgatory—since the Mark was bound. Taking out a single vamp at a time hardly counts. But this, tonight? He might just have to call on it. The Mark—or anyway the part of him that it spoke to, that still sometimes makes him hesitate for fear of what he’ll see in the mirror.

According to the spell, he should be able to control it. He just isn’t sure it’s that simple.

He crosses his arms, ready to fold in on himself where he sits, but Benny won’t let him, leaning forward into his space and taking his hand.

“What’s in your head, brother?” he says. 

Dean shakes his head. “I ain’t talking about it. Hell, I don’t even wanna think about it.”

Benny raises an eyebrow, and for a second Dean’s afraid he’s gonna push it. Then Dean will have to tell him where he can stick his concern, and everything’s gonna go to shit between them right before Dean gets zapped back to his own timeline. That’d be just his luck.

But Benny just sits back on his heels and says, “Okay.”

Dean blinks at him. “Okay?”

Benny gives him this sad little smile that clutches painfully at his heart. “Whatever it is,” he says, “chances are, I can’t fix it. And if talkin’ about it won’t help none, then I ain’t gonna force you.” His thumb moves in slow circles on Dean’s palm, and then he leans in again. His other hand comes up to cup Dean’s cheek—careful, like he’s asking permission. Then he frowns and pulls his hand back.

His thumb has caught a bead of blood, from the nick where Dean cut himself on Warren’s old-fashioned razor. It stands out dark against Benny’s skin.

Benny just looks at it for a second. Dean feels him go tense, feels the shift in his breathing. Then—slow, deliberate—he wipes the blood off on the leg of his pants and moves to touch Dean’s face again, careful to avoid the cut. He just stays there for a second, their faces inches apart, as they breathe in each other’s space.

Alone, crammed into this small space together, everything seems that little bit bigger and harder to hide from. This is a bad idea. It’s just gonna complicate things. It could fuck with Benny’s whole future, with his chances of meeting Andrea and forgetting Dean.

Only Dean’s a selfish asshole, and part of him wants to let it happen anyway. Say ‘fuck the consequences’ and forget about the future, forget about everything for a little while.

“Tell me I’m oversteppin’ my bounds here,” Benny tells him, “and I ain’t gonna question it. Hand on my heart.”

Dean swallows, suddenly dry-mouthed. Looks for a protest in himself and can’t find one.

“Because after tonight,” Benny goes on, “you’re gone, ain’t you? Seems to me it’d be a crime to let you go without saying goodbye.”

There’s an undercurrent of sadness in it, and that’s what breaks Dean, in the end. Because Benny knows they’re not _this_ , in Dean’s timeline. He knows they never get the chance again. And Dean can’t. He can’t be the asshole this time. Can’t throw Benny away—not again.

He shuts his eyes. Leans in and closes the distance between them and presses his lips to Benny’s. Benny gives a soft grunt of surprise—and then he’s kissing back and, just for a moment, all that Dean feels is relief.

Just a moment, but fuck if that same selfish part of him doesn’t want to hold onto it, and when Benny breaks the kiss, Dean chases after it with a noise of protest.

Benny gives him a small, crooked smile, rests his palm lightly against Dean’s chest. “Tell me if I’m bein’ too forward here, chief,” he says, “but how about we move this someplace more comfortable?” His glaze flicks toward the hatch that leads down into the sleeping quarters. 

Dean follows it, and feels his heart speed up. Kisses are one thing, but the idea of being in a bed with Benny—that’s different, _more_. Dean hasn’t been with another dude since before he found Sam in Stanford, and those few times were nameless, back-alley fumbles after too many beers, no risk of a _Call me?_ or an awkward morning after. This is different. Already feels more naked, somehow, even though they’re both still fully dressed.

“Just a suggestion,” Benny says. “Pretend I didn’t say nothing, if you like.”

Dean should. He really should.

But he can do this, or he can think about the fight, and the future, and the fact that his mission here was a total fucking waste, and when he looks at it that way, it’s no choice at all.

He plasters on his best approximation of a smirk, and slides across the floor toward the hatch. Pauses and holds out a hand. “You coming?” he says. “Or what?”

The smile that breaks across Benny’s face is like the sun coming out.

Dean slides down the hatch, Benny’s feet just above his head as he follows after. By the time he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for Benny to join him, his heart is beating faster again.

Maybe Benny hears it, because he sits down, the mattress shifting under his weight, and then presses a chaste, closed-mouthed kiss to Dean’s lips. Moves his head an inch to the side and says, “You know, we don’t gotta do nothin’ but this,” against Dean’s cheek. “Not if you don’t wanna.”

Dean takes a breath. He hates how goddamn reassuring that is, how raw and obvious it makes him feel.

“Jesus, Benny,” he complains. “I ain’t some blushing virgin.”

Benny huffs out a laugh, his breath tickling Dean’s ear. Wraps his arms around Dean’s waist and coaxes him down onto the mattress, so they’re lying face to face on the narrow bed. Even then, though, he doesn’t do more than lean in for another kiss.

So Benny’s determined to take it slow. Dean guesses he can live with that.

He swallows around the pulse in his throat. Closes his eyes and presses into the kiss.

It’s spit-slick and unhurried, lingering for long moments as they inch closer to each other—slowly, slowly, until they’re pressed together all along the length of their bodies. It’s Benny who breaks away—but only to trail kisses along the line of Dean’s jaw (careful to avoid the little cut there), to his throat and the sensitive spot under his ear.

It tingles, sends a spark of arousal right through him and makes his breath catch in his throat. Benny gives an approving hum and does it again—only he gives a flick of his tongue, this time, and after a second Dean finds his voice enough to say, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.”

“Yeah?” He feels Benny’s smile against his skin; the brush of his beard as he dips his head to take Dean’s earlobe in his mouth. It’s such a little thing, but Dean feels it right down his spine, and suddenly he’s aware that he’s half-hard in his pants, and whatever reply he was gonna give comes out somewhere between a gasp and a moan.

So his body’s on board with this, whatever his brain has to say about the whole thing.

Well, Dean’s trying not to listen to his brain right now, anyway. 

He’s clutching fistfuls of Benny’s undershirt, and he lets go to pull Benny even closer, rolls his hips so that Benny can feel his answer instead of hearing it.

In the dim cabin, Benny’s eyes gleam.

“So that’s how it is, huh?” he says, and doesn’t wait for an answer before he leans in for another kiss. He shifts his weight so he’s half on top of Dean, sliding a thigh beneath his legs, the bulk of him solid and inescapably present under Dean’s hands.

Good. That’s good. Present. That’s what Dean’s trying to concentrate on right now.

So he closes his eyes again and lets himself get lost in it. The flush of heat working its way up his body, the friction of Benny’s thigh against his hardening cock. The softness of Benny’s mouth on his mouth. The brush of Benny’s thumb over the pulse point in his throat.

It’s simple. Pure. Exactly what he needs, and he’s doing a pretty awesome job of forgetting, thrusting his hips up shamelessly and letting Benny swallow his moans, when Benny stops kissing him and slides down the bed.

“Hey,” Dean protests, propping himself up on his elbows. Then he sees Benny sliding off the edge of the bed, hears Benny’s knees hit the deck, and it’s a shot straight to his dick.

Benny chuckles. “Problem?” he asks.

It takes Dean’s brain a couple seconds to come back online long enough for him to croak out, “No. No problem.”

“Good.”

Dean lets his head fall back onto the mattress. Only Benny’s still taking his sweet time about this. He doesn’t even move to unfasten Dean’s pants right away—just pushes his shirt up out the way and leans in to press wet, open-mouthed kisses to the soft part of his stomach, to the ridges of his hipbones. He kisses his way _up_ , dips his tongue into Dean’s navel, which tickles enough that Dean lets out a surprised laugh, raises his head and says, “Fucking weirdo.”

Benny just smiles at him. “Ain’t so ordinary yourself,” he says. It sounds so simple, so damn genuine, and Dean shouldn’t be blushing with another dude’s mouth a couple inches from his dick, but here he is.

“Dude,” he groans. “Shut up.” It’s a piss-poor attempt at covering, but apparently Benny decides he’s had enough of teasing anyway, because he makes short work of getting Dean’s pants open and noses at his erection through his boxers.

Dean can feel his breath. It’s warm, and somewhere through the sex-haze, Dean’s brain notes that that’s a surprise, though it shouldn’t be. Dean’s always known that vampires are infected, not undead like in the movies—but maybe some part of his mind has been holding onto that idea anyway, thinking that they should be cold, lifeless things.

Benny’s warm. Warm, and only a hair’s breadth from human.

He hooks his thumbs under the waistband of Dean’s boxers, pulling them down around his knees to get them out the way. And then—fuck, then he just dives right on in, and his mouth is warm too, and it’s sweeter than apple pie and icecream, and it’s all Dean can do to keep himself from moaning out loud.

The vibration around his cock as Benny chuckles deep in his throat does pull that moan out of him, and he lets his head drop back against the mattress, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that he sees stars.

Benny pulls back enough to grin up at him and say, “Don’t gotta be shy with me.”

Dean groans. “Is _don’t fucking stop_ too shy for you?” he gets out.

He doesn’t get a reply—just Benny leaning back in and swallowing him all the way down.

When he pulls off, Dean thrusts his hips up, tries to follow, but Benny grabs his hips and holds him down. Like he’s the cat and Dean’s the small animal trapped under his paw—which should be a scary thought in this situation, except that Dean doesn’t have the brainpower to think about much of anything right now. All he can do is grab at Benny’s shoulders and hold on while Benny sucks him off like he’s going for Olympic gold, taking him impossibly deep, giving liquid swirls of his tongue.

It feels like no time at all before Dean’s orgasm shudders through him. Actually leaves him a little lightheaded, because apparently all the blood in his body has gone south. He’s happily dazed, floating in the afterglow, and it’s only when Benny levers himself off of the floor and crawls back up the bed that Dean cracks an eyelid.

Benny has this cat-that-got-the-cream look on his face, and for a moment Dean wonders if jizz does the same job as blood, for vampires. How different is the chemical makeup, anyway?

Then it occurs to him that he’s just had his dick in a vampire’s mouth, and he didn’t once think to worry about it, and he huffs out a laugh of surprise.

Benny cocks an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, and it really isn’t, but Benny smiles back at him anyway. He leans in, then; nuzzles at the side of Dean’s face and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Why’nt you crash for a couple hours?” he suggests. “Big night.”

Dean’s halfway to agreeing, eyes heavy-lidded, when his brain kicks in and he blinks himself back to wakefulness. “What about you?” he protests. 

“Already taken care of,” Benny says, and Dean feels his eyes go wide.

“You—?”

“Not that I’d say no to you returnin’ the favor some other time, but…” Benny smirks. 

But the moment hangs in the air long enough that the unspoken—the fact that they both know there won’t be any other times—starts to make itself felt, to creep in at the edges of Dean’s happy post-orgasmic haze.

Benny gets to his feet. “You know,” he says. “I’ll be mighty grateful if you tell me there’s spare underwear in that duffel of yours.”

He’s changing the subject so they don’t have to think about it all, and Dean accepts it gratefully. “Yeah,” he says. “Knock yourself out.”

Dean closes his eyes again. He’s already half asleep when he feels the mattress dip, and Benny pull the blanket up over him.

 

\----

 

When Dean wakes up, the sun is low in the sky. He jolts from half-dreaming to wired in the time it takes him to sit up.

It’s time.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean sets out with plenty of time to spare, taking a roundabout route to the meeting point. He needs to make sure that there aren’t any other vamps following him—plus, he wants to get a look at Warren’s buddies before he joins them. Warren doesn’t trust Dean—and okay, Dean hasn’t given him much reason to. But that means Dean can’t afford to trust him.

They’re the toughest hunts to navigate—the ones where you’re caught between some supernatural nasty on one side, and a human being who might not hesitate to knife you if you make a sudden move on the other. Reminds Dean of hunting with the Campbells and that creepy-ass, empty-eyed version of Sam who ran with them. He misses his brother—the real Sam, the one he can trust to have his back however badly things go south—with a sudden, bone-deep ache.

He makes himself ignore it and scans the street.

There they are, on the corner of Henderson, like Warren said. Three guys. Warren, plus a tall, rangy black guy leaning against a beat-up old truck, and a white-bearded old dude about the height and shape of a barrel.

Dean scans them from his vantage point down the street, trying to figure out where their weapons are—where he’d put them, anyway. 

Machete hanging from the tall dude’s belt. Gun tucked in the back of his waistband—might not kill a vamp, but it’ll slow one down. Probably a knife in his boot. Shotgun in back of the truck, but he won’t be bringing that along; too conspicuous to get on board the boat. Old guy has a shoulder holster hidden under his jacket, a machete of his own, and a flask of something stuffed in his side pocket. Dean man’s blood, at a guess. Not exactly the most effective delivery method, but Dean guesses that if you splash some in a vamp’s face, it’s probably a nasty enough surprise to throw them off-balance.

Warren’s holding something in his hand. Dean squints. A little metal box that glints under the sinking sun. Dean would bet he knows what’s in there. More dead man’s blood, syringes loaded up with perfect individual doses.

He casts one glance back upriver before he heads over. He can’t see their boat from here, but as he walked away, the light in the cabin blinked out, Benny keeping himself safe from prying vampire eyes.

That’s one thing Dean can feel good about here. Maybe these guys won’t trust him, but at least they don’t know about Benny.

He raises a hand as he walks over. “Hey, fellas. Been waiting long?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Warren smiles, and if Dean hadn’t overheard that phone conversation back at the store, he’d swear it was genuine. “This is Carl Jacobs.” He inclines his head toward the tall black guy, who affords Dean a nod. “Abe Carson.” 

Old guy gives Dean a sharp look, and says, “Winchester, right? Hope your intel’s good.”

“It’s good,” Dean says, shortly, and doesn’t elaborate.

“Okay then.” Warren’s still smiling. “ _Rosa_ heads out in an hour. Let’s roll.”

Dean nods. “You got a plan for getting us on board?”

“Sure,” says Warren, and nods toward the warehouse at the end of the harbor.

Dean and the other guys wait outside while Warren disappears inside. He doesn’t have to pick the lock, so he must’ve paid somebody off to leave the door unlocked. 

Neither Jacobs nor Carson seems much inclined to small talk. That would suit Dean fine, except for the glances they keep exchanging when they think he isn’t paying attention. They obviously know each other pretty well, because Dean recognizes those looks. It’s the same way he and Sam communicate when they’re around somebody they’re not a hundred percent sure about.

Dean scuffs at the dirt with his boot and hopes Warren hurries his ass out of there.

It isn’t long before he gets his wish. Somehow, Warren’s managed to get hold of a stack of crates stamped with the name of the shipping company and the _Rosa_. All four of them look like they could plausibly be working down at the harbor. Dean figures it’s as good a ruse as any.

Sure enough, after a short argument with an officious crewmember, which Carson wins by shouting louder about how much shit he’s gonna be in if he lets the ship sail without this really important last-minute cargo, it gets them on board. They ditch the crates in the hold, and hunker down there to wait.

It’s dark, cramped, and stinky, and things are no less awkward than they were before. After maybe ten minutes’ stewing in silence, Warren flicks on his flashlight and checks his watch.

“Half past,” he says. “What time do you think they’ll make their move?”

Dean shrugs. “They’ll wait until we get out of the river,” he says. “Far enough we can’t be seen from the city. Hour from now, maybe.” He’s guessing, really. It isn’t like he’s ever spent enough time on boats to figure out journey times. If he could just ask Benny—

He stops himself before he can head too far down that path. Benny isn’t here, and that’s the best way for things to be.

“Where’d you say you found this out again?” It’s Jacobs’ voice. He sounds calm—doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be ruffled by much, really—but Dean can feel the waiting silence, can imagine all three of the others looking at him like they’re waiting to catch him in a lie.

“Didn’t Warren tell you?” he says, voice carefully casual. “Got hold of a bloodsucker a few days ago. One of his buddies came looking. Found the instructions in his pocket after I gave him a little trim on top.”

Jacobs gives a short laugh. “And the first vamp?” he says, then. “What happened to it?”

Dean swallows, suddenly glad that they’re sitting in the dark. “I took care of it,” he says. “He was out of it. I wasn’t gonna get any info worth having out of him.”

“See, that’s the thing I don’t get.” Warren’s voice comes at him out of the gloom. “If you weren’t gonna use the vamp for info, why not just take him out straight away? Why bother with the antidote? Were you keeping it around as bait?”

Dean’s saved from having to answer by a noise somewhere further back in the hold. Just a rattle, like something small falling over, but it makes all four of them freeze.

“Think there might already be a vamp on board?” Jacobs asks. “Advance party?”

“I doubt it,” Warren says. “From what I’ve heard, not their MO. Probably just a rat.”

Dean grimaces. Even if he’s gonna have to return to his own time with no key and no Benny, there are a few things he’s looking forward to. Hot showers. An escape from the rancid salt smell of the harbor. And no damn rats.

“Winchester?” Warren’s voice again, and Dean realizes they’re still waiting on an answer to his earlier question.

“Yeah,” he says. “Bait. What else would it be good for?” He knows Benny isn’t here to hear him, but still, a little tendril of shame digs its way into his heart.

Warren makes a noncommittal sound, and they lapse into silence. With no way to tell the time in the dark, Dean isn’t sure how long it lasts. The next thing he’s aware of is a jolt like a titanic hammer-blow, and muffled screams up on deck.

The ship’s been rammed.

 

\----

 

It’s chaos up there. Panicked crewmembers dashing in every direction, doing nothing to calm the panicked passengers. A melee of bodies, parting and closing, punching and kicking and screaming and running, so it’s almost impossible to get a good look and see if a face has fangs.

The others fan out, machetes at the ready, apparently working to some already-formed battle plan that Dean either wasn’t let in on or didn’t listen to.

Doesn’t matter. He has his own plan. He holds himself out of range of the fighting for a couple seconds, scanning the deck for Faith and the kids. 

The dark and the lights of the ship turn every face into a nightmare mask. The action in front of him plays out like a shadow-puppet theater speeded up to manic intensity: a jerky series of images, outlines of limbs and raised weapons, impossible to focus on for more than half a second at a time.

There’s a splash to his left, too heavy to be anything but a body hitting the water. No way to see if it’s a vamp or an innocent person, so Dean doesn’t look. No time for distractions right now.

He sees them, then. 

Out on an open expanse of deck with nothing to hide behind. Connie has her arms wrapped around little Christopher, urging him not to look, and Faith’s shielding both of them with her body.

Dean’s moving before his brain has time to catch up with his body, shoving a figure who might be a bloodsucker or an unlucky crewmember—he just can’t see in the dark—out the way and throwing himself in front of them. Faith looks at him with wide eyes. Dean can see her realize this is why he told her not to get on the boat; can see her wonder whether she should be just as afraid of him as the monsters. 

He’s seen that look on a hundred civilian faces, but he doesn’t have time for it now. 

“Get below deck!” he yells. “Cargo hold. Over there!” He points in the direction he and the others came from. Faith hesitates. “Go!”

A figure lurches toward him. Dean sees the gleam of sharp teeth and swings his machete. At that, Faith unfreezes and grabs the kids, hustling them in the direction of the cargo hold.

And straight into the arms of a waiting vampire.

Dean’s heart catches in his throat as the vamp grabs hold of Connie, her scream swallowed up by the din on deck. Faith goes still, her eyes wide, the expression of a rabbit hypnotized by a snake, while Christopher cowers behind her legs.

The vampire leans in, sniffs the top of Connie’s head. Dean recognizes him, he thinks. One of the other vamps from the warehouse—and from his own time, too. Sorento. 

Sorento smirks. “Huh,” he says. “You smell _interesting_.” He runs the tip of his finger down Connie’s cheek. She’s trembling, but her mouth’s pressed into a thin line, her small face set stubborn. It’s the _determined not to cry_ face, and Dean bets he could guess exactly what’s in her head right now. If this is the last her little brother sees of her, she doesn’t want to be sobbing her eyes out.

It’s not gonna be the last. It can’t be. Dean won’t let that happen.

He tightens his grip on the handle of his machete and takes a step forward.

Sorento catches the movement. Holds up a hand. “Hey now,” he says. “You don’t wanna get in my way when I’ve just found somethin’ so rare.” He sniffs again—like a hound scenting blood, and the gesture on a human face makes Dean’s skin crawl. “I know that smell. What’s in your blood. It’s _magic_. The old man’s gonna want a taste of this.”

Dean’s stomach drops. Benny didn’t exactly go into detail about the old man and his habits, but he’s pretty sure being served up to him has to be worse than a quick death up on deck.

But Sorento’s got a bead on him, and if Dean moves, he’ll have plenty of time to tear the kid’s throat out before Dean ever gets there. He’s effectively stuck.

Dean curses. Casts around desperately for a distraction, for something that might throw Sorento off his game just long enough for Dean to drag Connie away from him. There’s nothing. They’re too close to the cargo hold, away from the main body of the fight.

There’s a sound behind Sorento. Down in the hold.

He blinks, turns where he stands. A figure looms up behind him.

“What the—” Sorento begins, and Dean takes advantage of his lapse in concentration to dive forward, grab hold of Connie and pull her out of the vamp’s grip.

Above him, there’s the sound of a machete slashing through the air, a wet noise as it connects with tissue and bone. A thud as Sorento’s head falls to the deck.

Dean presses Connie into Faith’s waiting arms and turns back to the cargo hold. 

For the second time this week, he’s paralyzed, staring at Benny in shock. He should be pissed. Should be yelling at Benny for putting himself in danger, maybe walking right back into the nest’s clutches.

He probably will, later. But just for a second, all that he feels is relief.

The moment’s broken by a wounded figure staggering toward them across the deck. Human, by the look of it, and dressed in salt-stained work clothes. Must be a member of the crew. He’s clutching his neck, gouts of blood spurting out between his fingers. He weaves toward them, stumbles and changes direction.

Dean takes an aborted step toward the guy, but he’s too late. The guy stops, goes still, and crumples lifelessly to the deck.

“C’mon,” Dean says, and turns back to Faith and the kids. “Let’s get you guys somewhere safe.”

Faith nods and makes for the cargo hold, both kids’ hands gripped tightly in her own. Connie doesn’t follow right away, though; she stops and plucks at Dean’s sleeve.

“What did he mean?” she says. “The scary man? What’s wrong with my blood? Am I sick?”

Dean takes a breath, then looks her in the eyes and gives her a smile. “No way,” he says. “You’re perfect. I’ll explain it all to you when we’re back on dry land, okay? Promise. But right now, you and your mom and your brother need to hide. I bet Christopher’s really scared, right? Needs big sis to look out for him?”

Connie nods solemnly, and one by one, they climb down the hatch into the cargo hold. 

Dean feels a hand on his shoulder. Benny.

“Everything okay here?” he asks. He’s looking at Dean, really, not Faith or the kids. There’s something soft in his eyes.

And even though they’re standing on the deck of a ship that’s under siege, bloodsuckers everywhere, Dean feels it in himself, too. It aches in his chest, and he doesn’t know if it’s relief or sorrow.

Dean scowls to stop himself thinking about it. He can’t afford to be soft here, now. “Except for the fact that some asshole doesn’t know what’s good for him and thought playing stowaway was a great idea? Sure.” 

Benny cocks his head. “Saved your bacon, didn’t I?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah. I owe you one. Now you take care of Faith and her kids, okay? I gotta get back out there, help the others.” 

But Benny shakes his head. Reaches out to touch Dean’s cheek—only Faith’s shocked gasp reminds Dean that this isn’t the time, and he pulls away. Benny gives a rueful little smile. “Nah,” he says. “You stay and keep these guys safe, brother. I got a plan.”

There’s something in his face as he says it. Something Dean knows too well.

It looks like _goodbye_.

“Benny,” he says, reaching out. “Stop—” 

Benny hesitates for maybe half a second. Then he squeezes Dean’s shoulder, bares his fangs, and dives back into the fray.

 

\----

 

Dean stares after him for a moment, protest dying in his throat. He wants to go after Benny, grab him and drag him back to safety. He wants it with everything he has.

Only there’s an innocent woman and her two innocent kids cowering in the hold, and Dean can’t leave them unprotected from the bloodsuckers on deck.

He gives one last look in the direction Benny went, then ducks inside the cargo hold and pulls down the hatch.

They huddle under it in tense silence. Dean pulls his gun out the back of his waistband and aims it at the hatch. Might not kill anything that tries to come through, but it’ll slow them down, hopefully knock them backward onto the deck. There isn’t room to swing a machete in here. Not without the risk of hitting somebody human, anyway.

Nothing comes through.

And then there’s a noise above decks. A dozen voices roaring in rage, and footsteps thundering to one side of the deck.

Dean steps up onto the bottom rung of the ladder and cracks the hatch open a couple inches—slowly, hoping that the movement will be too slow to catch anybody’s attention.

He needn’t have worried. There isn’t a single vampire looking in their direction. They’re clustered over on the right—sorry, _starboard_ —side of the deck, gazing out at the water. Passengers and crewmembers look around in bewilderment and begin to back away from that side of the deck, picking their way through the litter of bodies. Over at the far end of the deck, Dean sees Jacobs and Carson exchange nonplussed looks.

He casts a glance back at Faith. “Stay here,” he warns her. “Whatever you hear. Don’t let them see you.”

She gives a mute nod, and he climbs out onto the slippery deck. A quick look down is enough to tell him it isn’t just with water.

No time to think about that now, though, or to worry about whether the fallen bodies on the deck are vampire or human. Dean makes his way starboard—agonizingly slowly, because that’s the only way to avoid losing his footing and faceplanting in blood.

Before he gets there, the first vamp jumps overboard. He hears it hit the water below, and then the others follow. Within a couple seconds, every vampire on deck is in the water, swimming out away from the _Rosa_.

Dean looks around for somebody to explain what the hell’s going on. Jacobs and Carson are at the far end of the deck. With the shouts of the vampires ringing out across the water, they probably wouldn’t hear him even if he yelled. Warren has an injured civilian half-draped over his shoulder, helping him to sit. And Benny—

Benny’s nowhere in sight.

 _I got a plan_ , he said. It’s only when Dean peers back out at the water that he realizes what the plan was. 

The nest attacks ships on the water. That means they use their own boats to get close enough to board—small motorboats, Dean guesses, fast and maneuverable enough to make a quick getaway if they have to. But there isn’t a single small boat tied up alongside the _Rosa_.

In fact, there’s only one other boat on the water, and that’s maybe a hundred yards out at sea. That’s what the vamps are swimming for.

Dean doesn’t have to look to know who’s sailing it. Benny must have figured this was what the nest would do, if they saw their only escape route getting away. Sunk all the other boats, and used the last one to draw them off. And if they didn’t go for that, well, they’d definitely be out for blood when they figured out their missing buddy was the one screwing them over.

Dean’s stomach roils. He grips the side of the boat, trying to focus on the swimming shapes in the dark water, to figure out if Benny’s boat is moving fast enough to outrun them.

Thing is, if he does, they’ll have no reason not to turn back and attack the _Rosa_ again. Dean figures that out the same moment Benny kills the engine, and his little boat stops moving.

He watches with his heart in the mouth as the boat bobs there for thirty seconds, a minute. As dark shapes emerge from the water and swarm it.

There’s a tussle going on out there. Shouts. Splashes. Figures in the water, the boat rocking. But it’s too dark and too far away for Dean to see what’s going on, and he could punch a hole in the side of the boat with the frustration of not knowing.

He squints into the water until his eyes hurt, but there’s no sign of Benny.

There’s a voice behind him. Some frantic crewmember talking into a radio.

“…returning to shore,” he’s saying. “Gonna need emergency medical, and there’s—” he pauses, gulps “—there are bodies.” A pause. “I don’t know, man. They were like wild animals. I got no fucking clue.”

Dean feels the shift in the _Rosa_ ’s course, then, the deck tilting under his feet. He has to grab onto the side of the boat again to keep his feet.

Part of him wants to yell. Protest that they can’t leave yet, they have to wait, he has to know what’s happening to Benny.

The rest of him knows it’s no use. The crew won’t listen to him, and he can’t exactly commandeer a ship all by himself. Best thing he can do right now is go reassure Faith and the kids.

The vamps aren’t all dead, but they’re gone. And they didn’t save everybody, but they saved some. As hunts this size go, that usually counts as a win.

It just doesn’t feel like one this time.

Dean’s turning away, back to the cargo hold, when he sees something out the corner of his eye.

There, up at the far end of the deck. A shape appears over the side of the ship.

It’s a cap. A familiar cap. Perched atop a familiar face sporting a familiar fanged grin, and a familiar set of broad shoulders. 

Dean’s heart leaps into his throat. “Benny!” he calls, and takes a step toward him. “You made it! How the hell did you make it?” He pauses. “How the hell did your _hat_ make it?”

He doesn’t get an answer, to either of his questions. Right then, there’s a movement on Benny’s right. Jacobs lunges forward, sweeps one long leg under Benny and knocks his feet out from under him. He hits the deck like a sack of rocks. Carson appears on his other side, reaching for a weapon.

And then something hits _Dean_ , hard, right on the back of the head. His vision swims, his knees stinging as he hits the deck.

The last thing he sees before the lights go out is the blade of Carson’s machete, glinting in the dark as he brings it down on Benny’s neck.

 

\----

 

When Dean comes around, he’s on dry land, the sky lightening above him. And he’s lying in back of a beat-up truck with his hands tied behind his back and Jacobs’ shotgun pointed at his chest.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean swallows around a tongue that feels thick and furry in his mouth. His eyes are gritty, and his head throbs like somebody’s trying to kick down a door just behind his eyeballs, making him wince when he tries to lever himself into a sitting position.

Jacobs jabs him in the chest with the barrel of the shotgun, knocking him back onto the floor of the truck. Pain flares brightly inside his skull.

“Had to knock you on the head a couple times to keep you out,” Carson explains, helpfully. “Sorry about that.”

“Yeah,” Dean gets out. “I bet you felt real bad about that.” 

There’s someone sitting behind him, too. He squints up and distinguishes Warren’s face.

“So,” Dean says, after a moment passes with no explanation. “You fellas gonna tell me what all this is about, or are we playing Twenty Questions here?”

“Well.” Warren sits forward, elbows on his knees, and his face looms upside-down in Dean’s field of vision. “We were actually hoping you could help us out there. Like by telling us what the vampire you said you killed was doing on that boat.”

Benny.

The memory floods back, then, and Dean’s world tilts in a way that has nothing to do with his likely concussion. They killed Benny.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, Warren’s still looking down at him impassively. Dean wants to spit in his face.

No, scratch that. What Dean actually wants to do is burst out of his restraints and punch Warren right in his self-righteous face, kick him to the ground and beat him bloody. Then take out Carson and Jacobs for good measure.

 _You could do it_ , a voice tells him, a little whisper in the back of his mind. _You know how._

The Mark. If he just reached into that dark place inside of himself, tapped into its power—Dean could have his revenge. He was so damn scared of having to use the Mark during the fight, and it didn’t even come up. But now? Now, Dean isn’t hunting. He’s just mad as hell.

He looks up at Warren, calculating. Warren’s unarmed, relying on Jacobs and the rope tying Dean’s arms together to keep him safe. Dean’s gonna have to take Jacobs out first: get him off balance, kick the shotgun out of his reach. Carson’s holding a machete, but Dean can see that the old guy’s flagging after the fight. He won’t be fast enough.

Dean turns his head to look at Warren again—and his eye catches on something on the collar of his own shirt. 

A speck of something brown.

Old blood, he realises; dried darker than the fresh stuff from the fight on the _Rosa_. It must be from where he cut himself shaving yesterday. A memory arrests him. Benny, last night, being so careful to avoid that bead of blood, though he’d been getting by on cartons of congealed crap from the butcher for who-knew-how-long. Must’ve been tempting, but he didn’t try anything—and Dean didn’t fear that he would, not even for a second.

Dean closes his eyes and lets out a breath. Back in his own time, Benny called _him_ for help when he was running on empty, needed somebody to help him stay on the straight and narrow. He’d been living with bloodlust years longer than Dean has; fighting it every day. Dean imagines the sadness on his face, if he ever found out that Dean had given in to it the moment he was gone. Imagines the scales falling from his eyes as he figures it out: Dean’s no better than a monster. He’s weaker. Worse, because this is a choice.

The shotgun jabs him in the ribs. “Ain’t got all day,” comes Carson’s voice.

Dean opens his eyes, looks hopelessly up at Warren. “You don’t know what you did,” he says.

“We did our job,” Carson says. “Which was killing monsters, last time I checked.”

“Yeah.” Dean scowls up at him, holds on tight to his self-control. “Monsters. Not good men.”

Briefly, Carson’s expression looks just like Dad’s used to, when Dean fucked up on a hunt and Dad was a few too many whiskeys down for patience. Warren holds up a hand, looks like he’s about to cut off the coming tirade—but it’s Jacobs, silent until now, who pipes up.

“Your friend back there wasn’t a man anymore,” he says. “Not the man you knew, anyhow. Because you did, didn’t you?” He fixes Dean with a look. “Knew him before he got turned.”

Carson turns his head, looks for a moment like he’s about to tell Jacobs to shut it, but doesn’t. Surprise, then acceptance, cross Warren’s face. Like he hasn’t thought of this before, but now that he does, it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

And hell, it’s as close a lie to the truth as Dean’s ever gonna tell these guys, so after a second, he gives a cautious nod.

“Hey, I get it,” Jacobs tells him. “Only it wasn’t my buddy. It was my wife.” His eyes grow distant, his face softens, and you could almost forget that he’s pointing a shotgun in Dean’s direction. “Got bit by a werewolf, back in ’54. I tried to save her at first, too. Thought if I just stuck with her, I could get her to remember who she was.” He shakes his head. “But it don’t work that way.”

“You’re a hunter,” Warren puts in. “You know things don’t work that way. I’ve seen it before. People convince themselves things will be different when it’s their family, their friends. It never is.”

Same thing Dean would’ve said, not so long ago. Before he met Benny for the first time—and maybe even after that, when the Mark was riding him, goading him to grab onto any excuse for a little bloodshed. The lecture makes him bristle, but it’s also probably his only chance of getting out of here without a lead lining.

Reluctantly, he nods. “I get it,” he says. “You’re right. I just—kinda hoped, I guess.” He doesn’t have to fake the tremor in his voice. 

Jacobs sits back on his heels and sets down the shotgun, apparently satisfied. Warren gives a nod.

Carson scowls, but, outvoted, he digs in his jacket pocket and produces a key, hauling Dean up onto his knees, none too gently, to unlock the handcuffs.

“This doesn’t mean we trust you,” he warns. “You get outta town. And if we ever see you again…” He trails off, letting the threat hang in the air.

Dean ignores him and turns to Warren, rubbing the circulation back into his numb hands. “There’s one more thing I gotta tell you,” he says. “And then I’m gone. You won’t see me again—guaranteed.” It’s one of the few promises Dean’s ever made and been certain he can keep.

“Yeah?” Warren says.

“The key. The thing I was looking for when I got here. You gotta drop it. Don’t go looking.”

Warren inclines his head. “And why would that be?”

Dean doesn’t have to dig too deep into his memories for a story. “That kind of magic? It’s too dangerous. If you ever tried to use it—innocent people would die.” It’s the best he’s got to protect Connie right now, and it isn’t even a lie.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” says Warren. Dean studies his face for clues, but he doesn’t know the guy well enough to read his poker face. He has no idea whether Warren’s taking him seriously or not.

He rubs at his aching head, then gets up and hops out of the back of the truck. Grabs onto the side of it and steadies himself until the world stops swirling around him, and then starts walking.

 

\----

 

Sun’s up by the time Dean hitches a lift back into town. From what Cas said, this is the last day Dean can safely be here. He just hopes he has time to figure out where Faith is before he has to go. He hopes they made it off of the _Rosa_ okay.

After all, he still owes Connie an explanation. He has to do right by _somebody_ here while he has the chance.

“Everything okay?” The driver who picked Dean up—a balding, middle-aged dude called Frank who drives at a snail’s pace—casts him a concerned look, and Dean realizes he must have groaned out loud. 

“Fine,” he says, though his head’s still throbbing and his mouth tastes like a raccoon shat in it while he was out. “Thanks.” 

“Son, you don’t look so good. Think maybe you should see a doctor.”

Dean gives him a tight smile. “I’ll get on that. Just as soon as I take care of what I gotta take care of.”

Frank looks dubious. “I don’t know. Think you should let me drop you off at the hospital, myself. You got a pretty good bruise there.” He gestures at his own forehead. “It ain’t far, just on Eddy Street.”

“I’m fine,” Dean says, then stops. “Wait. Eddy Street? ‘S by the harbor, right?”

“Yeah. Won’t take us more’n a couple minutes to get there.”

Dean nods. “So if a boat got in trouble near here, anybody got hurt—that where they’d take them?”

“I should think so,” Frank says, slowly. He’s looking at Dean like he’s a couple cards short of a deck. “But kid, you oughta get checked out.”

Dean flops back in the shotgun seat. “Sure,” he says. “Why not? Take me to the men in white coats.”

 

\----

 

The hospital’s a big place. Dean paces around the waiting room for a couple seconds. Then his vision goes gray at the edges and his guts turn, so he drops into a seat and scans the faces of the other patients. None of them looks familiar. None of them is Faith, or Christopher or Connie. 

He sits obediently while a nurse cleans up his cuts and fires questions and shines a light in his eyes before she pronounces him concussed—which he’d guessed, thanks, from the way the world tries to swim away from under his feet whenever he stands upright. 

“You need to rest up,” she tells him. “Stay off of your feet. Is there somebody who can come pick you up?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Payphone?”

“Down the hall.”

He heads in that direction, digging in his pocket like he’s looking for a quarter. Halfway to the payphone, he starts to feel a little lightheaded again, and he has to stop and use the wall to hold himself upright, swallowing around the nausea that rises in his throat.

Nurse was right: he does need to sit the fuck down. But he needs to find Connie more. He just doesn’t know where to start in this place.

A voice down the corridor worms its way into Dean’s consciousness, then. It’s a man’s voice, unfamiliar—but it’s what the guy’s saying that gets his attention.

“I know what I saw!” the guy yells, on a rising note of hysteria. “I’m telling you, their teeth, they were like—like animals! It wasn’t natural! I _saw_ it!”

Dean peers down the corridor; finds the yelling guy just in time to see him escorted down the corridor by a couple of orderlies.

“Just come with us, Mr. Burke,” one of them says. “You’re safe here.”

They exchange looks behind yelling guy’s back, and the other one shakes his head. “Third one today,” he says. “What the hell happened out there?”

The first orderly shrugs, and they disappear around the corner. Dean follows.

They’re out of sight by the time he rounds the corner. The first corridor he ducks into, on his right, leads onto an almost-empty ward, just one guy with both his legs in plaster dozing on his narrow hospital bed. Dean almost doesn’t notice the white patch of gauze taped to the side of his neck, the sickly grayish cast to his skin.

He backs into the corridor and shuts the door behind him. This guy was lucky. Plenty of others weren’t.

The next corridor he checks out is all men. He sighs and looks around the next door—and sees the name on the end of a hospital bed. Christopher Roberts.

Little Christopher’s in the hospital bed, nursing a bandaged arm while Connie holds a water glass to his mouth, keeping it steady while he sips. Faith is in the bedside chair, her normally ramrod-straight posture bowed with exhaustion. The shadows under her eyes are carved deep.

But she doesn’t look afraid anymore. She looks—relieved.

Dean takes the last couple steps toward them a little too quickly and has to grab the edge of the bed to keep his balance, his head throbbing with pain.

Faith sits up in her chair. “Dean!” she says. “We didn’t see you, when the ship got back to shore. We thought—” She breaks off, and her eyes do an involuntary dart to the side. Dean realizes she’s checking to see if he got bit.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says. “Got knocked out. You mind if I—?” He nods at the foot of the bed and sinks down to sit on it before he gets an answer. He may feel like death warmed over, but these guys don’t need him blacking out on them.

“Did you see what happened?” Faith asks.

“I saw enough.” Dean squeezes his eyes shut, and the image of Carson’s machete slicing through the air flashes behind them. He opens them again and nods at Christopher. “What happened to the little guy?”

At that, Faith gives a tired smile. “He slipped on deck when we were getting off the boat,” she says. “Could’ve happened anytime. Doctor says we just need to keep it bandaged up.” Then she leans forward in her chair, the smile slipping from her face. “I should thank you,” she says. “You tried to warn us. But I have to ask. You saw those people, those—those _things_ that attacked us. You knew what they were. Tell me I’m not crazy.”

Dean sighs. “Nope. You saw what you saw. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but—monsters are real.”

This is the part where civilians usually freak, maybe try to argue, but Faith just nods and sits back in her chair. “In a way,” she says slowly, “it’s a relief.”

Dean stares at her. “Sorry, what?”

She casts a quick glance at the kids. They look to be in their own little world, absorbed in one of those intense kid-conversations that make zero sense to adults. Still, Faith lowers her voice and beckons him to lean in closer before she speaks. 

“When Stephen died,” she says, and then stops. Inhales deeply and composes herself. “When Stephen—killed himself. The police said he’d lost his mind, and at first I—I told myself I believed them. It looked that way. He’d painted these—these designs, on the walls. And there were pages of his handwriting, only they weren’t in any language I recognized. And there was so much _blood_ —” She breaks off again, just for a moment. “But I felt something, too. When I found his body. Something in the air in that room—it’s hard to explain, but just for a moment, I felt like I was somewhere else. Somewhere completely unfamiliar.”

Dean squints past his headache. “Like, another world unfamiliar?”

Faith’s eyes go wide. “Exactly,” she says. “It wasn’t natural. I tried to believe that I’d imagined it, that it was the shock—but after what happened with Stephen’s parents…”

“You figured there was something going on you hadn’t been told about.”

She nods.

Dean picks his next words carefully. Faith might be accepting the whole thing more easily than most civilians do, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be fucking terrified when the shock wears off and normal life—or however normal life can be once the supernatural comes knocking, anyway—picks back up.

“Your husband,” he says. “Stephen. He had this—ability, I guess. Something he got from his mom or dad. In the blood. From what I’ve heard—it opens doors, or closes them. Doors between worlds. Sounds like Stephen was trying to use it when he died. I’m guessing he meant well, but—well, he died.”

“In the blood,” Faith repeats. She hesitates, remembering, and then her eyes narrow. “What that creature on the boat said. About Connie—”

Dean nods. “She’s got it too. And I’m not gonna lie to you. There are people out there who might want to use it the same way, if they get the chance. Which is why I gave her those sigils. You still got ‘em?”

Faith nods.

“Good. Because Connie needs to have those with her all the time. Sew ‘em into her clothes, write ‘em on her hands—whatever you gotta do. They’ll keep her safe.” He pauses. “And if you run into any other hunters—anybody else like me, I mean? You probably don’t wanna tell them about it.”

“I can do that.” Faith gives him a pained smile. “I’ve had a lot of practice not telling.”

“I hear you.” Dean starts to get to his feet. “Look,” he says. “I gotta get out of here. Just—take care, okay? Of them.” He glances at the kids. “And yourself.”

“You’re leaving?” Faith frowns. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but—you look awful. You should probably stay in the hospital.”

“Trust me,” Dean says. “I’ll be a hell of a lot better once I get home.”

It’s a bare-assed lie. He feels like steamrollered crap now, and he’s gonna feel even more like steamrollered crap when he zaps back home and has time to actually _think_ about what’s happened. But hey. Isn’t like there’s anything left to keep him here.

Dean starts for the door—and then a small hand grabs his.

He turns. Blinks. It’s Connie. She looks up at him with her big, solemn eyes. “Thank you,” she says. “And please tell the other man thank you from me. He saved me.” 

“Sure thing, kiddo,” Dean tells her, and squeezes her hand. He even manages a smile.

He keeps it on his face as he makes his way out the hospital, stopping every couple minutes as his vision swims or his head throbs painfully enough to make him wince. That fake smile on his face is probably the only thing that saves him from getting hustled into a hospital bed by some worried nurse, and it propels him down the few streets toward the harbor, fending off the concerned glances of passers-by.

The concerned glances tail off as he reaches the docks. Dean figures people must be taking him for a drunk, still wearing the scars from last night’s bar fight. Either that, or with all the crap that’s been happening around here lately, they’re just minding their own damn business.

Can’t say he blames them. If Dean had just minded his own damn business, then Benny would still be here.

Eventually, he rounds the corner into the alley he woke up in his first morning here, and he lets the smile drop off his face. Lets himself sag against the wall, and takes one last look around.

The spot where Dean found the dead guy, his first morning here, is empty, but there’s a dark stain on the wall. Still smells like rotting fish and garbage. Between that and the concussion, Dean’s just lucky there’s nothing in his stomach to puke up. He’s exhausted. Every part of his body feels like dead weight, and if he closes his eyes he can feel himself sinking. Down, down through miles of cold dark water, until there’s no more light above him and he comes to rest on the ocean floor.

Dean shakes himself. Gathers his thoughts and casts them out into the ether. 

_Cas, man_ , he says, inside his head. _Beam me the fuck up._

 

\----

 

_Fifty-six years and five days later_

 

“Dude.”

Dean doesn’t look up from the laptop. “What.” He keeps it flat, not a question, in the hope that Sam will take the hint and go away.

Sam doesn’t. He crosses his arms and looks down at Dean with that expression somewhere between puppy-eyes and impatient schoolteacher. Dean’s pretty sure he’s one more argument away from staging an intervention.

Right now, though, he just sighs and says, “At least go take a shower. You reek.”

“Sure,” Dean says, to shut him up. “In a minute.”

Sam’s right. Dean hasn’t exactly done much other than sit around the bunker feeling like crap since he got back, and he’s definitely starting to smell a little ripe. It’s just that the thought of doing anything—even just taking a shower or making a sandwich—makes him so damn tired. Only reason he’s left his room since he got back is that Sammy or Cas will come and lecture him if he doesn’t put in an appearance a couple times a day, and the thought of listening to their concerned voices doubles his exhaustion.

Benny’s stuck in Purgatory, just as lost as he was before Dean zapped back to ’59. No convenient exploding Leviathans around, and you can’t exactly get a reaper on the phone these days. No amount of sympathy is gonna fix that.

At first, Sam let it slide. Dean had a concussion, and his mission had been a pretty fucking epic failure, and he guesses Sam couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting to stare at the wall and do nothing. Must’ve been pretty disappointed himself, but he’s taking it well enough—outwardly, anyway. 

It figures. Sam might be willing—hell, eager—to sacrifice himself for the greater good, but not an innocent little kid. And Cas might be a big-picture kind of guy most of the time, but he didn’t question Dean’s decision, either.

Well. Connie’s a little girl who lost her dad because he tried to do the right thing. Don’t have to be a genius to figure out who Cas is picturing in her place.

They’ve mostly let him be so far; but now Sam’s standing in his bedroom doorway, still looking at him like he’s waiting for an answer. Dean groans.

“I said in a minute,” he snaps, and turns back to the laptop screen, hoping Sam gets the message.

Benny’s the one thing he hasn’t told them about. Not just the way things went down, but the fact he was there at all. There’s nothing obviously different about his timeline, though he’s spent hours scrolling half-assedly through history pages on Wikipedia, just in case, He hasn’t found much—just one entry on Andrea Bayoumi (née Kormos), the first woman to singlehandedly sail a yacht around the world. Still alive; now retired and volunteering at some maritime museum in New York.

It should worry him, he thinks. He changed things when he went back. Andrea. Sorento. More importantly, Faith and the kids. Dean touched their lives. Told them things they wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t been there. It’s hard to believe none of that is gonna have consequences. 

When he tries searching his memories of Benny to see if they’re still the same, he feels like he can’t reach them. They’re muffled under the same heavy absence, and Dean wants to be angry about that, only he can’t find the energy.

He ought to tell Sam and Cas about it, but he can’t, somehow. When he thinks about Benny, it’s like this heavy blanket of silence settles over him, numbing him, insulating him from the world. It weighs him down, keeps him tired. He doesn’t know where he’d even start to explain, so he’s just keeping his trap shut.

Sam shakes his head and says, “I just don’t see what kind of internet porn can be this important.”

He isn’t pushing it. He’s giving Dean the opportunity to throw, _Man, it’s all that important_ , or something, back at him and brush it off—and it’s that, more than anything, that makes Dean close the laptop and meet his eyes and say, “You remember Benny?”

Sam blinks in surprise. “Dean, of course I do,” he says. “The guy saved my life.”

The fact that that’s the first thing Sam says takes Dean by surprise. Despite himself, despite everything, he feels the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah,” he says, quietly. “Yeah, he did.” Then, “You remember that time me and him worked a job together? That nest in Washington?”

“I remember,” Sam says. “First time I met him.” He frowns. “That was his old nest, right? From when he was—” He stops. Dean blinks and looks away.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just—you remember anything else about that job? I mean, I know you didn’t trust him. You eavesdropped on a call or two sometime, right?”

Sam blinks a couple times, too fast, and doesn’t look at him.

“I ain’t pissed,” Dean tells him—and he isn’t, really. Doesn’t have the energy for it. “I just gotta know if you remember anything about it.”

Sam gives him a curious look. “Well,” he says, slowly. “The one time I heard you talk about it—it kinda sounded like you were trying to reassure him. Tell him it was the only thing he could have done. I guess he was pretty cut up about it.” He gives a rueful little smile. “Just seemed like one more reason not to trust him, at the time.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Dean says. “But did you hear me say anything else? As in, anything about a woman?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you had time to hook up on that case?”

“No, nothing like that. I mean—one of the vamps. Somebody Benny—somebody from his past.”

Sam frowns for a moment, but shakes his head. “No,” he says, finally. “I mean, I just listened in that one time. It isn’t like you told me the details. But I don’t remember you talking about anybody like that.”

“Okay,” Dean says, and lapses into silence.

Of course Sam doesn’t remember it. Andrea never became a vampire. She wasn’t there. But Dean forces himself to sort through the fog of memory, and he can see her. The same face from the photograph on her Wikipedia entry, only younger, frozen in time. And the lost look in Benny’s eyes.

“Dean,” Sam says, finally. “What’s this about?” He pauses in the doorway, and Dean can see the cogs turn, realizes what’s about to happen a split second before Sam’s eyes go wide and he takes a step into the room. “Dean—did you _see_ him? Was he there?” Worry clouds his expression. “Did something happen?”

“Yeah. And yeah.” Dean pushes the laptop away and closes his eyes. “And yeah.”

He feels the mattress dip as Sam perches himself on the end of the bed. Feels the concern and the expectancy in Sam’s silence, but doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t have it in him to cry about Benny, doesn’t even have it in him to feel anything right now. He definitely doesn’t have it in him to talk it out.

“You gonna tell me what?” Sam asks, eventually.

“No,” Dean tells him. “Look, Cas starts noticing the space-time continuum falling apart or whatever, you can both come kick my asses. But no.”

Sam doesn’t even argue. Just leans over and squeezes Dean’s shoulder for a moment before he gets to his feet.

The door closes softly behind him. Dean thinks about just burrowing back under the blankets and closing his eyes again. Hell, he’s tired enough. It’d be the easiest thing.

Instead, he climbs out of bed, and grabs a towel.

 

\----

 

He’s staring at his blotchy, bloodshot-eyed expression in the mirror, trying to decide if he has the energy to shave or if taking a shower was his limit for today, when there’s a knock at the door.

That’s weird enough that it jolts Dean into something like alertness, and he ducks into his bedroom before he goes to answer it, grabbing his gun off of the nightstand and tucking it into the back of his jeans.

Just for a moment, his earlier worries—or the worries he should be having, anyway—float to the forefront of his mind. _Consequences._ He shakes his head to clear them away and makes for the door.

Sam’s already there, also armed. He double-takes when he sees Dean showered and dressed, but says, “I’ll get it,” jerking his head to indicate that Dean should stay out of sight, just in case they need to get the jump on anybody. Or anything.

Dean nods and ducks to the side. Sam opens the door, his face grim.

The UPS guy standing behind it gives a startled blink over the top of his clipboard. “Uh,” he says. “You… don’t have a mail box. Letter for Dean Winchester?”

Sam glances over his shoulder, catches Dean’s eye. Dean spreads his hands, attempting to communicate, _Don’t ask me_ , with his eyebrows, though there’s a pit of dread opening up in his gut. He was dumb to think that it could be otherwise: that he could touch the past and it wouldn’t come back to bite his future in the ass. 

Sam shrugs and takes the clipboard, scribbles his signature, and hands it back. The UPS guy gives him a plain white envelope. He studies it for a moment, then holds it out to Dean.

Dean doesn’t recognize the handwriting, and it isn’t much of a letter. There’s just an address in Florida, and a single line scrawled under it:

_It’s time to close those gates._


	12. Chapter 12

It takes Dean a couple minutes to piece it together.

The name signed at the bottom is unfamiliar. Constance Okyere. Florida. Dean hasn’t been in Florida for years; avoids it if he can. The damp heat is stifling—seriously, it’s like the sweaty crotch of the United States—and the supernatural nasties that make their homes in swamps tend to be the seriously unsanitary kind. He doesn’t know anybody down there, and definitely not anybody with an old lady name like Constance.

Then his brain kicks in and it clicks. Constance. Connie. 

Her last name was Roberts—but it’s been nearly sixty years since she was that little girl sitting in that hospital in Providence. She probably got married sometime in the intervening years—or maybe just changed her name to make herself harder to find.

And— _Time to close those gates?_ There’s only one thing that can mean. She’s figured out the ritual. For a brief moment, Dean feels his dread almost give way to something else.

Then it turns back to dread.

Wordlessly, Dean hands the letter to Sam. Watches his eyes move as he reads; watches the brief flare of hope as he figures it out, and the way his expressions clouds over right away.

Dean told him everything. About the key; about what using it would mean. If Connie’s willing to make that sacrifice—well, it can’t mean anything good.

 

\----

 

There’s no phone number and no email address, and both of their combined hacking efforts turn up squat. After a morning spent searching, Dean figures out that they’re gonna have to drive to fucking Florida. To _Palm Gardens_ , which sounds like a nursing home, and surely Connie can’t be old enough for that just yet? She was ten years old, tops, in ’59, which means she’s still under seventy. 

It’s weird, but it’s the only shot they’ve got. Far as the records are concerned, Constance Okyere is a ghost. Like any hunter worth her rock salt should be.

The thought sits like a stone in Dean’s gut, though he knows it’s inevitable once the supernatural finds you. There ain’t no getting away from it. The thought of that sweet kid growing up in the darkness, surrounded by the freaks and the monsters, just because of who her dad was, makes him want to protest anyway. 

Still. She’s, what, sixty-five and still kicking? That’s an achievement for anybody in the life. 

Benny would be glad, Dean thinks, to know she made it.

The thought takes him by surprise. It’s a pang in his chest like being gently stabbed, and it leaves him staring blankly at the wall, losing track of whatever Sam’s saying to him because for a moment he just _hurts_.

First time he’s thought about Benny and actually felt something since he got back, and it fucking sucks.

“Hey.” Sam’s hand is on his shoulder. “Hey. Dean. You okay?”

Dean forces himself to meet Sam’s eyes and finds them wide with concern. Oh, yeah. Dean was still playing shut-in this morning. Sam isn’t gonna drop the mother hen act anytime soon.

“No, man.” Dean snorts. “ _Florida_. Eighty goddamn degrees is bad enough when I don’t gotta share a car with your farts.”

Sam studies his face for just a second longer, and then—mercifully—makes a face and gives Dean a shove. “Dude,” he says. “You can say nothing. Have you ever walked into your room after a burrito?”

“Hey, at least I know how to make a burrito. You know. Real food, not that quinoa rabbit shit.”

“It’s pronounced _keen-wah_.”

Dean shakes his head and grabs his duffel. “That’s it. I don’t have a brother.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam turns and heads for the corridor. “See you in the car in fifteen?”

“Sure.” Dean waits for him to leave the room before he lets the smile drop from his face.

But, weirdly enough, by the time they hit the road, Dean feels more human than he has since he got back here. Like that thick layer separating him from the world has been tugged back, just a little.

 

\----

 

The drive down the Keys is as sticky and uncomfortable as Dean expects, but, by unspoken mutual agreement, they stick it out, only breaking as often as they have to. By the time they find Palm Gardens, Sam’s hair is plastered comically to his forehead and Dean is down to his t-shirt, sweat trickling down the back of his neck. The air outside the car offers no relief, and Dean’s so busy being uncomfortable that it takes him a couple minutes to register the wording of the sign.

 _Palm Gardens Hospice Care_.

This isn’t a dumping-ground for old people. It’s for dying people.

There’s an old guy smoking on a bench outside the front door, holding a newspaper in front of him, though he doesn’t seem to be reading it. It occurs to Dean that the guy looks vaguely familiar, right before he looks up from his paper and does a double take.

The old guy gets to his feet. “Well, holy shit,” he says. “She was right. It’s you.” He stubs out his cigarette and extends a hand.

“Christopher,” Dean realizes, and takes it.

Christopher nods. “When Connie started talking about time travel—well, I didn’t know what to think. Some of the lore says it’s possible, but—” He shakes his head. “I wondered if it wasn’t really about…” He jerks his head in the direction of the hospice building, indicating the whole crappy situation. “You know how it can mess with somebody, knowing they don’t got long left.”

Dean does, kind of. That stuff Sam said during the Trials, about the light at the end of the tunnel? He spent a lot of time convincing himself that was real hope, not just the illusion of it, not just an excuse. When he glances at Sam, there’s a look of recognition on his face that screws Dean’s insides up with guilt.

Between that and trying to reconcile the weary man in front of him with the kid he left in Rhode Island a few days ago, Dean can’t find the words to answer. In the end, it’s Sam who says, “Well, it’s possible, and here we are. Uh, Sam Winchester, by the way.” He offers his hand and Christopher shakes it. 

It’s all very polite, and Dean can’t just stand here ignoring the elephant in the room. In the garden. Whatever. He looks Christopher in the eyes. “You know why we’re here, right?”

“Yeah,” Christopher says, tiredly. He doesn’t look happy, but it’s the unhappiness of an argument long since lost. Resignation, really. “You guys better come in.”

 

\----

 

Connie’s eyes are closed when they walk in. Though she isn’t even seventy, she’s so thin she looks like a skeleton, her face ashen and hollowed-out. There’s a rattle to her breath that’s painful to hear. If reconciling Christopher the old guy with Christopher the little boy was tough, this is enough to make Dean’s brain flat-out refuse to cooperate.

 _I just saw her_ , it protests. _She was alive. She was so alive._

It’s harder to digest than violence, somehow. The life drains out of people like this over the course of years—decades, even. Seeing it happen overnight is like watching a special effect on TV. Dean half expects the curtain to be pulled back, any second; Connie to jump up out of her hospital bed and take a bow.

All he says aloud is, “She awake?”

“Just about,” Christopher replies.

Her eyes blink open, slowly. Her gaze focuses on Dean, and she gives a small smile, inclines her head in recognition.

“So you got my letter.” When she speaks, it sounds like it hurts. “Chris?” she says. “Give us a minute.”

That’s something Dean can recognize, a shade of the girl he met in 1959. Still protecting her kid brother from the crap neither of them should have to deal with, right until the end.

She waits until Christopher’s ducked back out into the corridor, closing the door behind him, then sits up a little way and fixes her eyes on Dean. They’re bright and piercing as a bird’s, the way old people’s sometimes get—maybe from staring down everybody who expects them to have lost their marbles.

“You know why I wrote you,” she says.

“Yeah.” Dean sits in the chair beside her bed and frowns. “Thing I don’t get is, how did you know to write to me? I never told you where I was from. I mean, _when_ I was from. I never even told you about the gates. So how’d you figure it out?”

Connie raises an eyebrow. “You really thought I was gonna live my whole life not knowing who I was?” she says. “Soon as I was old enough to realize there were other people out there who knew about this side of the world, I tracked one of ‘em down. Showed him the sigils you gave me. He told me what they were, but he never could figure out _why_ angels might be lookin’ for me—or anybody else, for that matter. I was stuck on that for years. Until my grandparents died.”

Dean looks at her. “You mean your dad’s parents?”

“That’s right.” Connie doesn’t need to explain how she feels about them—her disgusted expression says it all. “Mom didn’t want me to take anything they left behind, wanted to pretend they never even existed. And I get it, believe me. But she wasn’t the one with _magic in her blood_. I had to know.” She gives an amused little half-smile. “You know, I’d wondered if I maybe had some kind of power. Something I could use to help people, help myself. When I went through their papers, I realized I had power—but it wasn’t gonna be any use. Not to me, anyway.”

“’S how the life goes,” Dean says. Then, “How’d you wind up hunting, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” Connie tells him. “Not exactly. But I got good at research, digging into my past. After a while, they’d come to me for information. Help figuring out what they were hunting and how to kill it. I ended up knowing so many hunters I’d hook them up when they needed backup. Somebody heard about a job on the other side of the country, I’d find somebody in the area to take care of it.” She shrugs. “Somebody had to do it.”

Dean can’t help smiling, just a little. “Sounds like somebody I used to know.”

Connie turns to the nightstand. With one thin, wrinkled hand she picks up a photograph frame, looks at it for a moment before handing it to Dean.

The woman in the photograph is stunning. Late twenties, maybe, standing in the sunshine with a smile on her face. Could be any vacation snapshot, except for the shotgun she’s leaning on and the black lines of the tattoos peeking out from the sleeves of her shirt. Dean can’t see all of the designs she has on her left arm, but what he can make out is enough: they’re the same protection sigils he gave to Connie back in ’59. There’s an anti-possession symbol on her right forearm.

He hands the picture back to Connie. “That your daughter?” he says.

She smiles. “Tanya.”

“And let me guess. She _did_ become a hunter.”

Connie’s smile turns sad. “I begged her not to,” she says. “She said she couldn’t stand by and do nothing, knowing what was out there.” She pauses. “So now you know why I have to do this.”

She doesn’t elaborate on what _this_ is, but she doesn’t need to.

Dean sighs. “Hey, she’s taken care of herself this far,” he tries, though he already knows it isn’t gonna help.

“Tanya can handle herself against a werewolf, or a wendigo, or an angry spirit,” Connie agrees. “I always knew she’d be great at whatever she put her mind to, and she is. But these last few years…” She shakes her head. “The world’s a bigger, scarier place than it used to be. I know you boys know about that.” She looks them both over shrewdly. 

“That’s how you figured it out,” Dean realizes. “The time travel. That I was from your future.” He hadn’t bothered with an alias when he landed in ’59. There weren’t gonna be any federal agents hunting for a guy who hadn’t been born yet. 

“Heard your name.” Connie nods. “Saw your face on the TV, looking a whole lot younger than you did fifty years ago. I’d read stories about angels being able to blast people through time, and when I heard that you ran with one—well, it all started to make sense. I knew I was gonna need help with the ritual, and you boys already have some idea what you’re doing.”

“You can’t ask us to help you kill yourself,” Dean says, but it sounds weak, even to himself. He already knows that she can, and they will. He can see hope and horror warring on Sam’s face—but most of the time, Sam steps back and sees the bigger picture when it counts. He’ll do it this time, too.

Connie shakes her head. “Now,” she says. “I could do another round of chemo. Eke out a few more miserable months, and die a death that means nothing right here in this bed. But my little girl, my brother—they have to keep living in this world after I’m gone. And if I can do anything to make it safer for them, I’m damn well going to.” She looks up at Dean, her eyes fiercely determined. “So you’re going to help me.”

It isn’t a question, and this time, Dean doesn’t argue.

 

\----

 

Cas calls to say he’s a couple hours out. Nobody disagrees that waiting for angelic backup, just in case anything fucks up during the ritual, is a good idea. After dark seems like the right time for it, anyhow.

Dean and Sam leave, under the pretense of getting things set up for tonight, but really to give Connie and Christopher a couple hours together and Connie the chance to call her daughter, who’s in Nebraska on a salt-and-burn, and hasn’t been told about the plan.

Part of Dean feels uneasy about that. Another part of him knows he’d likely do the same thing, if he were Connie.

They hunt down the items on Connie’s shopping list, then drive out to the place she told them about—a deserted cabin that looks about two minutes away from sliding into the swamp. They work methodically, in silence, to paint the sigils, set up the candles and the herbs, double-check the incantation.

And then there’s an hour to kill, and nothing left to occupy their hands with.

Dean wanders outside and leans against the Impala under the darkening sky. The heat’s still sticky and oppressive, and he grabs a beer out the cooler and holds it to the back of his neck. There’s a huge, old cypress tree right at the edge of the swamp, its roots poking down into the water like Cthulhu’s toes.

For a moment, Dean stares at it in silence. Then, Sam’s footsteps, the sound of Sam settling against the car beside him.

“You okay with this?” Sam says, eventually.

Dean gives a short laugh. “Not really. Ain’t my decision, though, is it?”

Sam doesn’t respond to that—not even to say, _Wow, you’ve learned_ , for which Dean’s grateful. He just makes a thoughtful noise, and then says, “Is this about Benny? I mean, he saved her, right? When she was a kid? So—”

“Drop it, Sammy.” Dean sighs and cracks open the beer, takes a long swig. “I dunno, man. Maybe it is about Benny. But you can’t do anything about it, so just—drop it, okay?”

He’s saved from having to argue about it anymore by the sound of an engine and the glare of headlamps through the trees.

Cas’s fugly Continental pulls up a minute later, and he gets out, wearing a suitably solemn expression.

“This is the place?” he says, without preamble, as he approaches them.

Dean nods. “In all its five-star glory.”

Cas takes a look around, then turns back to Dean, apparently satisfied. “We should begin soon,” he says. “Where is she?”

 

\----

 

Turns out, sneaking an old lady out of a hospice after visiting hours is practically a military operation. Christopher distracts the head nurse with a million trivial questions, while Sam swipes a wheelchair from an empty room down the hall, and Dean and Cas haul Connie out of bed and half-carry her to the door. They have to stop just the once, when a nurse with white-blonde hair flits across their path like a ghost—but she doesn’t seem to see them, and after a moment, they carry on.

Connie seems totally unfazed by Cas showing up, just gives him a measuring look and then says, “I never met an angel before.”

He gives a little frown and says, “That’s not a bad thing. Many of them are… difficult.”

“Honey,” Connie says, “that goes for everybody.” And that’s that.

She rides in back of the Impala with Christopher while Sam gets a ride with Cas. Alone with the two of them, so soon after he left them as kids, Dean feels like he should at least say something. His brain stubbornly refuses to supply him with _what_ , though, so they make the drive in awkward silence.

But when they reach the cabin and Dean stoops to open the car door for her, she takes his hand. Her grip is weak, her hand dry and papery, but it stops Dean where he stands anyway.

“Your friend,” she says.

Dean blinks. “You mean my brother?” he asks. “Or Cas?”

Connie just looks at him. “You know who I mean. Your friend who saved my life that day. On the boat.”

“Benny?” Dean says. The sudden change of subject takes him by surprise, and his voice wavers a little.

“The vampire,” Connie says. “That was what he was.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. He swallows. “But he wasn’t like—I mean, he never woulda hurt you. He was—”

“Not like the others,” Connie finishes for him. “I know. Believe me, I never forgot that. And the longer I lived, the more I had to admit not all monsters are the same.” She pauses. “You saw Ana, back at the hospice?”

Dean frowns. “Who?”

“One of the nurses. Pretty little thing. Blonde hair.”

He nods. “Yeah. I think she nearly saw us when we snuck you out.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Connie tells him, with a smile. “She’s a rusalka.”

“Water spirit?” Dean blinks. “I thought they lured dudes to their deaths for kicks.”

“Some of them still do. But around here, any time some idiot gets himself lost in the swamp and has a little help he can’t explain finding his way out again? Probably means Ana or one of her sisters was looking out for him.” Connie looks him in the eyes. “There’s a lot in this world we can’t explain. People most of all. Some of them are worse than they should be, some of them are better. And your friend Benny died saving innocent people. I’d say he was a lot better.” 

She reaches into her pocket, then. Produces something small that Dean can’t really see in the dark, and slips it into his hand. It’s smooth, cool. 

“I don’t know if it’ll work,” she says. “But you’d only need to open the portal for a couple minutes. It should be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Dean asks, but Connie’s already levering herself to her feet, ignoring the offered wheelchair and hobbling toward the cabin with Christopher’s shoulder for support.

 

\----

 

The ritual feels like it should be _more_ , somehow.

The incantation’s in some Celtic language that even Sam doesn’t know how to pronounce, so Cas handles the reading. Sam arranges bones and sets light to bunches of stinky herbs. Which leaves Dean and Christopher on either side of Connie, flanking her like bodyguards.

Except they’re not gonna protect her. They’re gonna stand by and watch her kill herself.

The thought clenches like a fist in his stomach.

When Sam hands her the dagger, though, and she moves toward the center of the sigil painted on the floor, she isn’t stooped and hobbling anymore. She’s drawn herself up to her full height—which okay, isn’t much, but still—and she moves like she’s going into battle and she fully intends to win.

The last words Dean hears out of her mouth, before she puts the dagger to her wrist, are, “Thank you.”

Dean doesn’t know who she’s saying them to. Christopher, for not standing in her way, even though letting her do this has to be killing him? The rest of them, for helping out with the ritual? The world, for giving her a chance to close those gates?

Christopher is at her side then. Whatever last words she has for him, Dean doesn’t feel like he should be listening in, so he turns away. They wait.

 

\----

 

It’s Christopher who finally asks, “Did it work?”

Connie’s breathing lapsed into silence minutes ago—or maybe hours; Dean isn’t sure about time right now. There was no clap of thunder as the doors closed. No shimmering portal opened up in front of them and then vanished into the ether.

“I don’t know, man,” he gets out. “Cas?”

Cas’s eyes go unfocused for a moment—like he’s listening out for angel radio, or trying to sense something—and then he shakes his head. “I can’t tell,” he says. “But this was about Hell, not Heaven. There’s no reason that I would.”

Dean sighs and scrubs at his eyes. Then he pushes the cabin door open and steps outside. Ritual’s over. Shouldn’t do any harm.

It takes his eyes a moment to get used to the darkness—but when they do, he stops dead. Grabs his flashlight and bangs on the cabin door.

“Guys!” he calls. “Get out here!”

The huge cypress at the water’s edge is split right down the middle, as though a bolt of lightning hit it, though none of them heard any sign of a storm while they were in the cabin. And there’s something charred into the bark. A symbol.

Dean doesn’t know what it means, but he hears Cas take in a sharp breath as he steps outside, and turns to look at him.

Cas nods, confirming what Dean’s already thinking. “It’s done.”

 

\----

 

Dean ought to feel better, on the drive back home.

He can see that Sam does. They’re not exactly gonna be throwing a party anytime soon. They can’t forget what closing those gates cost. But it’s there in the way Sam moves. His walk is looser, and for the first time in—well, in more years than Dean cares to count—he doesn’t look tired. Tired because he hasn’t gotten any sleep, sure—but tired in that bone-deep way, like all the shit in the world is piled up on his shoulders and he’s never getting rid of it? Not anymore.

Cas, too. He isn’t exactly smiling, but he’s a hell of a lot easier to read than he was back in the day. He thinks they did the right thing. Or they helped Connie do the right thing, anyway. He’s probably right.

Dean, though—he keeps reaching into his pocket, touching the thing Connie gave him, wondering what she meant. And when it gets light enough, when he can sneak away and take a look without Sam around, he pulls it out and holds it up to the light.

It’s a glass vial, and it’s full of blood.

He understands, then. What she meant.

It floors him hard enough he shies away from believing it, at first, never mind explaining it to Sam. Dean screwing with the past—that’s the whole reason Connie ended up in the life, instead of getting to be a regular person. The reason she was in that cabin tonight, sacrificing herself for the sake of her family and the world. Dean knew the other shoe had to drop sometime. He just expected it to hit _him_ on the way down. Hard to believe he still makes that mistake, after everything; still expects the world to be fair.

This is so much more than he deserves. So he just flat-out doesn’t think about it the rest of the way back to the bunker. Doesn’t even put his hand in his pocket, for fear he’ll find it empty and he’ll have to admit he just imagined the whole thing.

When they get home, Dean slings his jacket on the back of a chair, and announces he’s gonna go fix them something to eat. When Sam walks in five minutes later, he’s still staring blankly at the cutting board.

Sam cocks his head. “Everything okay?” he says.

Dean looks at the counter. “Fine.”

“Really? Because you forgot to hang your jacket up. And, you know, you throw a shitfit whenever _I_ leave stuff lying around. And then I went to hang it up.” Sam holds up a hand. “And I found this.”

It’s the vial of blood.

“So, you wanna explain?” Sam asks.

Dean sighs, closes his eyes. “Not really,” he says. But there’s a spark somewhere inside his chest, warm and traitorous. 

Hope.

Sam listens quietly. Doesn’t comment; just offers the occasional nod and the occasional, “Yeah?” But when Dean’s done, he crosses his arms, face set in determination, and says, “Okay.”

Dean looks at him in puzzlement. “Okay what?”

“Okay, let’s do it. I’ll help.”

 

\----

 

It takes them a few days. They have to adapt the ritual they used to close the gates—change it to something that can open a portal and then close it again, and then direct it to Purgatory instead of Hell. Sam and Cas spend hours hunched over the translation.

And Dean—Dean gets in the car and drives to Maine, driver’s side window wound down to let the cold in.

 

\----

 

It’s early morning when he reaches the gravesite, sky pearly gray through the trees. Birdsong.

If Dean’s life were a movie, this would be the moment the audience realizes things have finally turned around. Like that scene at the end of every slasher flick where the final girl makes it out of the woods, out of nightmare and back into the real world. Sirens sound in the distance, and she finally lets herself cry. Roll credits.

This isn’t a movie, and Dean knows better than to let himself think he’s gotten a break. He digs, and he keeps his eyes on the makeshift crucifix he planted in the ground over Benny’s head—leaning, now, and snapped off a little at the top. Doesn’t let himself forget this is a grave he’s digging up.

He can’t help the pang he feels at his heart when he finally strikes bone. 

Benny’s bones are bare, fleshless. Must be a vampire thing, because he hasn’t been gone long enough for this to have happened naturally. They’re smooth and burnished brown, like bones on display in a museum.

Dean brushes the dirt from them and wraps them up with all the care he has in him; lays them in the trunk of the Impala like holy relics. He doesn’t even notice the mud on his hands until he stops for gas.

 

\----

 

They settle on the dungeon as the best place for it. If anything other than Benny comes through that portal, at least they’ll have somewhere to contain it. Dean paints sigils, then erases them and repaints them; drives around picking up ingredients, then drives back and picks up extra just in case. He lays out Benny’s bones in the center of the dungeon; has to stop himself from apologizing when he sets one down too roughly.

When there’s no more he can do, he goes into his bedroom, and digs under the folded clothes in the top drawer.

Benny didn’t exactly have much in the way of stuff. Living on the move most of your life will do that to you. Dean didn’t even have a picture of him. So in the end, before he buried Benny’s body, he cut a button off of his coat. 

He didn’t even know why he did it, really. Not like it was something that had meant something to Benny. So Dean tossed it in a drawer, let it get covered up by other stuff, and didn’t look at it.

Now, though, he pulls it out, turns it over in his hand.

Maybe if they’re looking for Benny, having something that belongs to him will help, somehow. Make sure it’s him who comes out of the portal, and not some Leviathan, or one of those creepy-ass gorilla-wolf things, or just some other two-bit monster. People used to bury the dead with all their possessions, stuff to accompany them on their way to the next world. Doesn’t seem like there should be any harm in doing the reverse.

There’s a tap at his bedroom door.

Dean stuffs the button in his pocket. “Yeah.”

The door opens, and Sam’s face appears in the crack. He hesitates there for a moment. “We’re all set.”

 

\----

 

It isn’t like the last time, in the cabin with Connie and Christopher.

The stinky herbs are the same. So is the guttural language of the incantation. But when Dean stands in the center of the sigil, uncorks the little vial of Connie’s blood, and lets it drip bright onto the floor, he sees something.

It’s like the air becomes visible, gains substance in front of him. It moves like water under wind.

Dean swallows. Forces himself not to take a step back.

The movement grows faster. Like there’s something agitating the surface of the air. Trying to get through.

Without his say-so, Dean’s hand finds its way to his pocket and clutches the button tight.

He stares at that spot in the air. Doesn’t dare blink. His eyes hurt.

The movement slows. Fades. Dean blinks. 

It’s gone. Benny’s bones lie inert on the floor.

He searches for his disappointment, but only finds a hollow inside himself. Like someone’s scooped everything out from inside his chest. He should’ve known better. The inevitability of it sinks into him and makes itself at home.

Dean turns back to face the others. 

“Dean—” Sam begins, and Dean raises a hand to cut them off.

“Don’t, Sammy,” he says. “Connie said it might not work. Thanks for trying, okay?”

“Dean,” Sam says, again. Dean opens his mouth to growl a retort.

Then he realizes Sam’s looking at something behind him. Registers Cas’s shocked expression.

He turns on the spot, and finds himself in Benny’s arms.

For a moment, all he can do is hold on. Bury his face in the crook of Benny’s neck and breathe in. He smells like Purgatory, like blood and dank air, but it doesn’t matter because he’s here, the bulk of him solid in Dean’s arms. He’s _here_.

His arms tighten around Dean’s waist, his beard tickling the side of Dean’s face. For a second, Dean feels a tremor run through him, and then he just holds on tighter.

Eventually, Dean pulls back. Looks Benny in the face. Searches his expression. That sweet, crooked grin. Those bright blue eyes. There’s relief there. Puzzlement. And maybe—

Benny leans in, then. He hesitates for a beat, giving Dean the chance to pull away, before brushing their lips together.

It’s barely a kiss. Barely even a touch. 

It’s enough. He remembers. It’s enough.

 

\----

 

“I gotta ask,” Dean asks, much later. “What _do_ you remember? I mean, I screwed with your past pretty good. How’s that even work?”

It’s weird enough having Benny in the bunker. Having him in Dean’s bedroom, on his bed, as they lie facing each other atop the covers—that isn’t even a scene out of Dean’s dreams, because he’s never let himself have those kinds of dreams. He still feels like he might blink and find himself alone.

Like he’s reading Dean’s mind, Benny reaches out, brushes a thumb down his cheek. “Brother,” he says, “I remember everything.”

“Yeah, but _which_ everything?”

“I mean everything.” Benny’s expression turns serious. “But it’s changing. I remember Andrea. I remember my nest hunting us down, sending me to Purgatory. I remember having to kill her.” He shakes his head. “But once, I coulda told you everything. Every fleck of color in her eyes, every little thought that crossed her face. Every spot on the map of places she’d sailed to, and every spot on the one of places she wanted to go. Now? She’s fading. I can’t remember how her hair smelled…”

His eyes are distant. Dean feels something hollow in the pit of his stomach. “Man, I’m sorry,” he says.

Benny shakes his head. “Don’t be.” He gives a small smile. “Because I remember you, too. I mean, it’s like I always did. I remember Providence. I remember that you were there. But then one day I turn around and I remember everything. Every detail of that room you stashed me in. The fancy-pants whiskey we found in that boat. And the _taste_ of you…” He blinks; focuses in on Dean’s face again. “So it ain’t all bad.”

At that, Dean manages a smile. “Guess not,” he says. 

He shifts, then, and something digs into his thigh. Frowning, he sticks his hand in his pocket.

The button. In among all the excitement of having Benny back, he’d kind of forgotten about that.

He holds it out, and Benny takes it with a mystified look. “What’s this?” he asks.

Dean shrugs and looks away, suddenly feeling kind of dumb. “’S from your coat,” he says. “I took it, after—”

Benny nods, saving him from having to say it. “And you carried it round all this time?”

“No, man.” Dean swallows. “I just thought—doing the spell to open the portal? Might find you easier if I had something of yours. Make sure it was you that came through.”

“Huh.” Benny looks at the button for a moment longer, then sets it down on the nightstand. “You know, I did feel something. A pull, I guess. But I don’t think it was this.” He inches in closer to Dean, then. Wraps an arm around his shoulders and presses a kiss to his temple, and finally Dean feels the ache inside of him ease.

It’s late. As they lie wrapped around each other, Dean’s eyelids start to droop.

He hasn’t even had anything to drink tonight. First time in he-doesn’t-even-know-how-long he’s felt easy enough to sleep without whiskey-flavored aid.

Benny shifts until he’s laying on his back, Dean’s head dropping down onto his chest.

“Think maybe we should get some sleep,” he murmurs into Dean’s hair.

Dean opens his eyes, looks up at him. “Really?” he says. “First night we get to spend in bed together, and you wanna sleep? I mean, it’s kinda been a while.”

Benny shrugs. “Brother,” he says. “I been living off the memory of that night fifty years. One more night ain’t gonna kill me.” He pauses. “An’ besides. I never got to do this before.”

He closes his eyes and lets his head drop back to the pillow, but Dean gets that he isn’t really talking about sleeping. It’s all of this. Not having anybody chasing them; not having to go chasing after anything that’s gonna try to eat them. Getting to just be together, no catches, no buts.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, sleepily. “Yeah. ‘S new. I like it.”

A chuckle rumbles in Benny’s chest, somewhere under Dean’s head. But if he has anything else to say, Dean doesn’t hear it, because then his eyes close and he’s asleep.


	13. Epilogue

The weird part is not having to hide it.

Sam gets over it quick enough, and Cas seems thoroughly unsurprised by the whole thing. It’s Dean who finds it tough to get used to. He spent so damn long shying away from the idea he could have something like this—with anybody, let alone with Benny—even inside his own head. He’s trained himself out of hope.

Some days—hell, most days—Dean’s first impulse is still to turn in on himself, bury what he feels deep down where it can’t be torn away from him. He still closes his eyes and sees the glint of Carson’s machete, feels the _Rosa_ dip beneath him, her deck slippery with blood.

He’s getting better, though. And eventually, when Benny emerges from Dean’s bedroom (he doesn’t think of it as _theirs_ , not yet, but he might actually get there one day) mid-morning and pads into the kitchen, leaning into his solid presence is instinct, not something Dean has to think about and give himself permission for first.

Their fingers brush around a mug of coffee. Benny’s eyes close as he inhales steam, and he nuzzles at Dean’s neck in sleepy gratitude.

Sam barely looks up from his phone. Cas, standing in the doorway, watches the whole scene and does his puzzling-out-human-stuff face for a moment, then announces, “I want to go see Claire.” 

“Huh.” At that, Sam does look up. “Jody just texted me. She’s got a couple skinwalkers in town, and Donna’s tied up with the day job. Wants to know if we can lend a hand.”

“Sure,” Dean says, then turns to look at Benny. “You want in? Might as well make this a whole family vacation.”

Benny gives a little smile, but then his eyes mist over and he looks uncertainly at Dean. “You know what?” he says. “There’s actually somethin’ I been meaning to do. Think maybe we could take a little detour and then catch these guys up?”

 

\----

 

“Here we are.” Dean pulls into the parking lot and kills the engine, but makes no move to get out of the car.

A _little detour_ turned out to be a hell of a detour. They’re outside City Island Nautical Museum, New York. The museum where Andrea works as a volunteer.

Dean can’t say he’s happy about this little trip, but he can’t exactly complain, either. He was the one who fucked with Benny’s past. He’s got no right to bitch.

As though reading his thoughts, Benny leans across from the shotgun seat and squeezes his hand. Dean doesn’t squeeze back.

“Dean,” Benny says, softly, and then waits for Dean to turn and look him in the eyes. He sighs. “I know this has gotta be strange. I just—I gotta see for myself. I appreciate you comin’. Truly I do.”

Dean hesitates a moment longer. Then he convinces himself to stop being an asshole, and leans over to kiss Benny’s cheek. “C’mon,” he says. “Didn’t drive all the way from Kansas to sit on our asses in the parking lot.”

The guy behind the desk sells them a couple tickets for the guided tour, then tells them they’re probably gonna be the only people on it. It’s a morning, middle of the week—not many other visitors around. Dean shrugs and pokes around the souvenir store to cover his discomfort, peering at tiny ships in bottles and boring-as-hell books on maritime history just to give himself something to do. Benny lets him and goes to stand by the window, looking out over the water.

Dean doesn’t recognize her, at first. She’s a couple inches shorter than he remembers, stooped with old age, her long hair turned iron-gray. It’s Benny’s shellshocked expression that makes him do a double take.

Apparently Andrea sees it, too, because she chuckles and says, “Don’t you look at me like that, young man. I may be old, but there’s nobody else knows half as much about these boats.”

Benny shakes himself, manages a smile. “Yeah,” he gets out. “I know who you are.” He hesitates, then offers his arm as his eyes land on something inside the body of the museum. “Say, ain’t that her? The _Artemis_?”

“The yacht that got me around the world? That’s her.” Andrea’s face lights up as they make their way through the doors, and Dean hangs back to let them talk. He leans on the railing around the _Artemis_ and waits.

The boat looks different here than she did in the harbor, bobbing on the water like she was alive and just waiting to be let loose from her moorings. Here in the museum, she looks fossilized; a piece of a different era, taken out of time and frozen. Hard to believe that he was looking at her in her prime just a few weeks ago.

Dean shifts uncomfortably on his feet. If this is weird for him, how the hell must it feel for Benny?

He sighs and pushes off the railing, heads back out to the parking lot to lean against the Impala.

The boats out on Long Island Sound aren’t relics. They’re moving, living things, carrying people all kinds of places. People like Benny. Hell, Benny’s spent half a century stuck on land. Talking to Andrea—maybe that’s gonna bring back all those memories. Maybe he’s gonna want to head back out there, where he feels at home, instead of being stuck in an underground bunker with Dean.

Last time Benny was topside, things got harder the longer he was here. They’re gonna have to find him a steady blood supply, somehow, sometime soon—but even if they do, it doesn’t mean the hunger will just vanish. He might find it easier out on the water, away from all the humans walking around like TV dinners on legs.

He always held back, though. Even when it was near enough killing him, Benny always held back. Back in ’59 he was half-starved, and Dean was right there—sleeping in the same boat, trusting him like an old friend. Benny didn’t harm a hair on his head.

It’s selfish, but Dean feels like he might need that. Might need Benny here to remind him about the line between man and monster. Not how thin it is—Dean’s had enough reminders of _that_ to last him a lifetime—but how sometimes, you get to choose which side you stand on.

Dean doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there when Benny’s hand on his waist brings him out of his thoughts. Benny’s smiling, but when he catches sight of Dean’s face, his smile fades.

“Everything okay, chief?” he asks, and Dean realizes he has his hand on his arm. Where the Mark used to be.

He hasn’t told Benny the whole story, and Benny hasn’t pushed. Dean figures he’ll end up spilling it all sometime, but Benny’s patient, letting him come around to it at his own pace. Another kindness that Dean doesn’t deserve, wouldn’t know how to ask for if it wasn’t offered.

He doesn’t answer for a moment. Lets his hand drop to his side, looks at his shoes, and swallows. Then he meets Benny’s eyes. “You miss it?” he asks.

Benny blinks, then looks behind him, out at the water. “Sure,” he says. “Maybe someday I’ll take you on a little sailing trip.” He takes Dean’s hand, then; traps it between both of his own and presses it to his lips. “But now? I’m right where I wanna be.”

There’s a whole lot unspoken behind his smile, but he lets it stay unspoken, and maybe that’s what allows Dean to breathe again.

They’ve got time. Benny thinks they’ve got time.

He reaches for Dean’s hand again when they climb back into the car, and Dean lets him take it. Benny settles in beside him, still smiling, and they drive off, eyes on the road ahead.


End file.
